In response to Peter Geoghegan’s article on Palantir’s foothold in the British state, Dr Devan Moodley argues that the nine years Greater Manchester’s health system has spent without Palantir is a result of bold conviction, not caution.
Greater Manchester’s Homegrown Data Capability
Greater Manchester’s integrated care board remains the only one in England to decline the Palantir-built federated data platform, having concluded that its own homegrown data capability was stronger. It built that capability with British universities, NHS clinicians and domestic technology firms.
Dr Moodley, CEO of Health Connect Global, suggests that if NHS staff dislike this tech and if Andy Burnham believes it is turning off voters, he should carry that same approach into Downing Street and put power back in the hands of UK companies.
Risk of Over-Reliance on Overseas Tech
As healthcare becomes increasingly dependent on digital platforms, cloud infrastructure, AI systems and data management technology, there is a growing risk of excessive reliance on a small number of dominant overseas – particularly American – technology companies. Dr Moodley emphasises this is not anti-American sentiment but common sense.
He calls on Downing Street to ask a simple question: if one English region can build sovereign health data infrastructure that outperforms the imported version, why can’t the country? The domestic alternative is not hypothetical; it is already running.
