Tony Blair And William Hague Push Sale Of NHS Data To Fuel Medical Innovation In Times Op-Ed
Tony Blair (left) and William Hague at the Shaping Us National Symposium at the Design Museum in London. Picture date: Wednesday November 15, 2023. 74573287 (Press Association via AP Images)
Former political rivals Sir Tony Blair and Lord William Hague joined together Thursday to publish a Times op-ed urging Britain to sell NHS data and anonymised citizen medical records, arguing it would “unlock prosperity.”
The unlikely pair argue that sale of the NHS’ data would propel the country to the forefront of the biotechnological and AI revolution. It marks their third collaboration in offering a strategic vision to cement the UK’s leadership in biotechnology.
Their strategy revolves around capitalising on anonymized NHS records. This data, they argue, is a goldmine for developing state-of-the-art treatments and AI-driven medical care.
Claiming it would open up an era of personalised healthcare monitored by AI, Blair and Hague are advocating for a “new national purpose” aimed at economic growth and innovative scientific breakthroughs.
Echoing their previous stance on digital ID cards, the duo now proposes over 40 recommendations encompassing regulation and state aid to implement the UK’s biotech revolution. They foresee a future rich in gene therapies, novel antibiotics, and advanced manufacturing processes, urging the nation to take an active role.
Their proposal includes creating a separate NHS entity to commercialise access to patient data, ensuring privacy while benefiting research and patient care. This model is likened to the BBC’s commercial arm, aiming to generate revenue and reinvest in NHS services.
The NHS sits on the world’s biggest cache of health data that consulting firm Ernst and Young say could be worth £9.6 billion annually.
While Blair and Hague argue for the merits it’s equally true that there are legitimate concerns about the exploitation of this data. Selling the highly personal data has serious privacy implications and, for the NHS, patient trust implications. Daily, the NHS juggles a million GP appointments and over 250,000 hospital visits – each one generating a data trove of highly personalised medical detail.
Anxiety about data safety and confidentiality was ignited last year when the NHS dealt a £330m contract to the tech giant Palantir to build a vast new data platform.
The involvement of Palantir, a company funded by the CIA as a start-up and known for collaborations with global intelligence and military, raised eyebrows. As part of a five-year agreement, NHS England has entrusted Palantir with the creation and maintenance of the “federated data platform.”
Palantir’s billionaire founder and chair, Peter Thiel, however, a 2016 supporter of Donald Trump and libertarian, is no fan of the NHS and is an advocate for privatisation. In an address to the Oxford Union, he criticised the NHS, suggesting it was detrimental to public health and described the British public’s loyalty to it as a case of “Stockholm syndrome.”
So, while Blair and Hague wax lyrical about how selling data would lead to a future where AI doctors monitor patients through wearables to action revolutionary treatments, critics raise the question of who might get their hands on the data and, more pertinently, ask: who will profit?
