The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has contracted Palantir to create a cloud-based data enclave to support COVID-19 research collaborations.
The new contract benefits the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) and is an indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) arrangement with a total potential value of $59.5 million over two years.
N3C has accelerated patient research and advanced COVID-19 knowledge since the beginning of the pandemic, studying topics as varied as treatment inequities and long-term consequences.
To aid N3C’s research, Palantir launched its new software in 2020, ensuring a secure platform for integrating and analyzing COVID-19 data while providing controlled access to internal and external collaborators.
Together, N3C Data Enclave and Palantir’s software facilitate cross-institutional research teams exploring rich data sets, including populations most vulnerable to COVID-19. Under the NIH RECOVER Initiative, the N3C will also study post-acute sequelae from COVID-19 (PASC), commonly referred to as long COVID.
“We are very excited to continue our work with NCATS and the research community to support this critical resource in the fight against COVID-19 as well as to study long COVID and potentially other diseases that pose major public health challenges,” said Akash Jain, Palantir USG president.
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Jain added: “Palantir was founded to put the most innovative software to work solving the world’s most pressing challenges, and working to empower scientific research, especially when it comes to helping the most vulnerable, fits squarely within our mission.”
Additionally, NCATS awarded Palantir a separate contract to use its software to accelerate cancer research at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and help with efforts to support the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Originally valued at $36 million per year, this contract has been extended for an additional year, totaling $60 million.
