Palantir to Help HHS Track Coronavirus
April 28, 2020
With Peter Theil’s ally in the Oval Office, Palantir Technologies’ fortunes have ballooned. Now, in addition to working with intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies, the data-mining firm has contracted with the Department of Health and Human Services. The Daily Beast reports, “Team Trump Turns to Peter Theil’s Palantir to Track Virus.” Sources say the company will contribute a major aspect of the HHS Protect Now platform, perhaps even its core element. That element is rumored to be the existing Foundry data integration and management platform. The CDC has been using Foundry to track hospitals’ efforts to cope with the surge in COVID-19 patients.
Reporters Erin Banco and Spencer Ackerman write:
“The HHS Protect Now platform, which is set to be unveiled later this week, pulls data from across the federal government, state and local governments, healthcare facilities, and colleges, to help administration officials determine how to ‘mitigate and prevent spread’ of the coronavirus, according to a spokesperson for the department. HHS told The Daily Beast that the department was working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA) on scaling the HHS Protect Now project, which became operational on April 10. … HHS said it has 187 data sets integrated into the platform, with inputs that include hospital capacity and inventories, supply chain data from the government and industry, diagnostic and geographic testing data, demographic statistics, state policy actions, and coronavirus and flu-like emergency department data. The spokesperson also said HHS was relying on ‘private sector partner contributions of data.’”
The tool generate models to predict the spread of the disease as well as the impact of decisions by the administration’s task force, state governments, and local leaders.
Cynthia Murrell, April 28, 2020
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