The British government, under pressure from activists, has released contracts it has signed with some US tech giants regarding the use of patient data to fight the corona crisis.
The contracts, which were concluded with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, the American surveillance company Palantir and an English AI company called Faculty were published by the organization openDemocracy.
The publication comes after a ‘freedom of information’ request, which forces the government to disclose information that concerns the public interest.
At the commencement of the corona crisis, the British government made agreements with these tech companies to build data models to combat the epidemic, among other things.
However, the question arises whether large amounts of patient data from the NHS, the UK’s national health care system, have been transferred to commercial players.
The question is what the companies in question still get from these agreements if they no longer receive data. For example, the Google contract states that the tech giant will provide services from March 1, without being paid for it.
The Palantir contract also talks about services from 12th to June 11, against payment of one British pound.
