Government faces legal action over £23m deal involving patient data

NHS England is facing a legal challenge against its decision to award a two year £23m (€27m; $32m) contract in December to the US data mining firm Palantir Technologies.

The independent media platform openDemocracy, which is bringing the legal action, claims that NHS England failed to carry out the required data protection impact assessment to ensure that health information was adequately protected before awarding the contract to build a software platform to handle patient data.1

The case is the latest challenge to the handling of contracts involving millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money during the pandemic. The High …