Meg Lambrych, RN, is a member of the Purge Palantir movement and lives in Bristol.

​As a registered nurse caring for immigrants in Maine, I see the terror on their faces caused by ICE’s presence in our state at each clinic. I also see the long-term effects this ethnic cleansing campaign has on their health, and the health of the many Americans caught in the crosshairs: missed appointments, delayed diagnoses and treatment, all of which lead to worse health outcomes and unnecessary suffering.

​Which is why I was mortified when I learned that MaineHealth, where I receive care, has a partnership with ICE’s leading surveillance technology contractor, Palantir. Palantir’s technology, like its ELITE app, enables human rights abuses by immigration officers, like the killing of our neighbor, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, in Biddeford on July 13.

​MaineHealth patients and healthcare workers should be wary of its relationship with Palantir, not only because of the company’s notorious track record, but also because Big Tech has a long and storied history of making American healthcare demonstrably worse. Efficiency is its favorite Trojan horse to gain entrance to spaces where it does not belong.

​The same scam that companies like Palantir are running on MaineHealth today is one that’s well documented, and yet hospital executives fall for it every time. That promise is: more technology equals better healthcare.

The companies peddling their wares swear that adopting the latest, shiniest tech (now cloud-based data systems) means better care for our patients. But it just isn’t true. Instead, the encroachment of surveillance capitalism into healthcare results in worse outcomes for patients, and increasingly dangerous working conditions for the clinicians who care for them.

​For example, when electronic medical records (EMRs) were adopted en masse in the early 2000s, their potential benefits seemed enormous. They promised more efficient charting and easier data sharing among the care team, which would prevent errors and make healthcare better and more efficient for all. How did that pan out?

​Hospitals across the nation adopted these EMRs as fast as they could, investing massive sums into their infrastructure. But far from creating the healthcare tech revolution they promised, EMRs were used by Big Tech to collude with insurance companies and massively bloat the documentation requirements for physicians, justifying the obscene rates they overcharge for healthcare.

​Instead of improving the workflow of direct care clinicians, it drastically reduced the time we get to spend with our patients because we’re chained to the computer to appease the insurance gods. This unnecessary administrative burden is a huge contributor to the clinician burnout, staff turnover and patient dissatisfaction that are destabilizing healthcare today.

​Despite formal requests for information from MaineHealth employees (including the Maine State Nurses Association/NNOC, the union that represents RNs at Maine Med), MaineHealth’s contract with Palantir remains shrouded in secrecy.

​Because of the company’s abysmal record in handling sensitive security data, countries across Europe, including Spain, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, are tossing Palantir to the curb and replacing it with alternatives. A recent report released by the National Health Service in the U.K. showed Palantir’s tech performed embarrassingly, with users saying the platform was slow, hard to use and a downgrade from their old software.

​On July 9, Purge Palantir Maine, a grassroots movement supported by dozens of community partners representing thousands of Mainers, delivered our petition demands to the MaineHealth Board of Trustees and executive leadership. Two other groups, the Maine State Nurses Association/NNU/NNOC and an environmental rights coalition, each submitted their own letters as well.

​On Monday, July 13, Chief Nursing Officer of MaineHealth Devin Carr responded to MSNA, rebuffing our shared demands and outright refusing to discuss the issue or meet with us to learn more. A few hours later, ICE agents murdered an innocent 25-year-old man in Biddeford, in front of his wife and 3-year-old daughter. These two actions are intricately linked.

​ICE and Palantir have Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero’s blood on their hands — and it is disgraceful that MaineHealth executives are collaborating with Palantir while hiding the terms of the contract.

​Unlike EMR tech, which was grievously mishandled but does offer big benefits, Palantir tech offers nothing but risk, dehumanization and death. MaineHealth must cancel its contract with Palantir immediately, and the executives who agreed the deal must be held accountable.