NEWS
Thales and Atos create a sovereign Big Data and Artificial Intelligence platform
was also awarded jointly to the two leaders by the French Defence Procurement Agency on April 30 , 2021 .
The new joint venture will initially serve the French market before addressing European requirements at a later date .
With the exponential rise in the number of sources of information and increased pressure to respond more quickly to potential issues , state agencies need to manage ever-greater volumes of heterogeneous data and accelerate the development of new AI applications where security and sovereignty are key .
Atos and Thales have announced the creation of Athea , a jointventure that will develop a sovereign Big Data and Artificial Intelligence platform for public and private sector players in the defence , intelligence and internal state security communities .
Athea will draw on the experience gained by both companies from the demonstration phase of the ARTEMIS programme , the Big Data platform of the French Ministry of Armed Forces . The contract to optimise and prepare the full-scale rollout of the ARTEMIS platform
Athea will create a solution to securely handle sensitive data on a nationwide scale and support the implementation of that solution within government programmes . The new entity will also provide expert appraisal , consulting , training and other services .
“ This joint venture between Thales and Atos illustrates the commitment of both our companies to supporting the Digital Transformation of our customers by providing a secure and innovative solution based on French technology to process huge volumes of heterogeneous data ,” said Marc Darmon , Executive Vice President , Secure Communications and Information Systems , Thales .
NHS Digital defends its plans to share patient data with third-parties
NHS Digital has defended wide-spread criticism about its plans to share patient data with third-parties . Fears grew around the confidentiality of patient data , but the organisation pointed out that patients can opt-out of the process .
An NHS Digital spokesperson said : “ Patient data is already used every day to plan and improve healthcare services , for research that results in better treatments and to save lives .
“ During the pandemic , data from GPs has been used to benefit millions of us : helping to identify and protect those most vulnerable , rollout our world-leading vaccine programme and identify hospital treatments which have prevented people dying from COVID .
“ We have engaged with doctors , patients , data , privacy and ethics experts to design and build a better system for collecting this data . The data will only be used for health and care planning and research purposes , by organisations which can show they have an appropriate legal basis and a legitimate need to use it .
“ We take our responsibility to safeguard patient data extremely seriously . Researchers wanting to access this data will need each request to be approved by the Independent Group Advising on the
Release of Data ( IGARD ) and a GP Professional Advisory Group ( PAG ), with representatives from the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners .”
The spokesperson said that NHS Digital will not allow data to be used solely for commercial purposes , nor will it approve requests for data to be used for insurance or marketing purposes , promoting or selling products or services and market research .
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