Palantir Government

The best way to understand what Palantir can do is to see it in action against real problems. The Analysis Blog features analysis of real data, guest posts from subject matter experts, introductions to new Palantir features, and other tips and tricks to improve your tradecraft.

Drug safety is a serious concern in the United States with adverse drug events contributing to over 770,000 injuries and deaths per year. Cost estimates range from $1.5 to $5.6 billion annually. The FDA closely monitors these adverse events and releases communications and advisories depending on the severity and frequency of the events. The FDA released such a communication regarding the drug Simvastatin in June 2011. Simvastatin, which is used to treat hyperlidemia, is one of the most heavily prescribed medications in the world, and nearly 100 million prescriptions were written for patients in 2010.

This demonstration draws on data from the FDA, Practice Fusion, and the National Library of Medicine to uncover how a drug communication can efficiently be applied to electronic medical records (EMR) within a health network. Through a variety of techniques, at-risk patients can be quickly found and notified using the Palantir platform.

Hurricane Katrina caused 1,833 deaths and $108 billion in damage, making it the deadliest and costliest hurricane in American history. When a collection of federal, state, and local agencies converged to respond to the crisis, they found they lacked analytic tools capable of tracking and responding to the dramatic volume and scope of relief needs as they developed.

Using only open source spending data from Congress’ Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), a Palantir analyst spent one week examining Katrina-related spending from 2005 to the present, with particular focus on the spending of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The analyst used Palantir’s geo-spatial, temporal, and relational analysis to add entirely new layers of depth to the FPDS Data.

Less than four months ago, the Southern portion of Sudan seceded and formed South Sudan, only the 5th country to be created this century. In this session, we will demonstrate how Palantir can draw from a plethora of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) data sources (including academic research, blogs, news media, NGO reports and United Nations studies) to rapidly construct an understanding of the conflict underlying this somewhat anomalous 21st Century event. Using a suite of Palantir Helpers developed for OSINT analysis, the video performs relational, temporal, statistical, geospatial, and social network analysis of over a dozen open sources of data.

Note: The key analysis portion of the video begins at about 2:10.

In this demonstration, we will show how an analyst can use Palantir to uncover insider threat.  Using the integrated data and a combination of analysis tools available on the platform, the investigator can seamlessly cross data sets, examine activity, and rapidly reveal suspicious employee behavior in an information security fraud case.

Note: Data used in this video is simulated; any connection to actual individuals is purely coincidental.