Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what anonymisation process her Department plans to use for the federated data platform.

The Federated Data Platform (FDP) and Associated Services contract has been awarded to a consortium led by Palantir Technologies which include Accenture, PWC, Carnall Farrar and NECS. This will see new software made available to trusts to manage their data, to deliver better outcomes to patients. The pilots identified benefits including shorter waiting lists, and quicker discharges from hospital.

The software will be more secure than anything currently used in the National Health Service thanks to new privacy enhancing technology (NHS-PET), which will provide robust protection and a standard approach to support safe data access and use. The NHS-PET has been procured from a different supplier, namely IQVIA. The first use of the new NHS-PET will be for the FDP.

The supplier of the FDP will only operate under the instruction of the NHS when processing data on the platform. The supplier will not control the data in the platform, nor will they permitted to access, use, or share it for their own purposes. The contract contains strict stipulations about confidentiality, and there is governance in place to monitor delivery and usage.

As part of the FDP Programme mobilisation, the team are working with the suppliers to design anonymisation processes in line with data minimisation arrangements and in accordance with the policies outlined above.