Many NHS trusts in England reject Palantir’s patient data platform

NHS organisations that care for millions of people in England are turning down Palantir’s patient data technology, according to freedom of information responses reviewed by The Guardian. Many health bodies said they already have systems that do the same job as well or better, just as ministers prepare to decide whether to use a break clause in the company’s NHS contract.

What happened

The technology in question is the federated data platform, or FDP, a £330m system run by the US company Palantir. It was introduced in March 2024 under a seven-year deal meant to connect data across the health system and improve clinical accuracy and efficiency.

The Guardian reviewed more than two dozen freedom of information responses. In them, 16 trusts and health boards said they do not use the platform. The responses came from across the country, from Gateshead to Truro. Some organisations said they had never adopted it. Others said they had trialled it and gone back to their old systems.

The reasons were broadly similar. University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust said it would not use the platform mainly because “it does not appear to provide functionality over and above what we have already”. Dorset HealthCare University Trust said it “will not be adopting or going live with the FDP”, and Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust said: “We have no plans to use it.” University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which cares for more than 2 million people, gave “limited expected benefit over existing solutions” as its reason for not using it.

Several organisations that had tried the platform were also unconvinced. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust said it had “not offered significant improvements on local systems”. Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust said it had not yet found an FDP tool that offered much more than it already had. A Suffolk trust said other systems “supercede” what the FDP can do, and Greater Manchester’s care board called it “duplicative” and “retrograde”.

The picture is not entirely negative. According to The Guardian, some health bodies said the platform had made waiting lists easier to manage and had improved surgery scheduling.

The freedom of information requests were made by Medact, a health campaign group that opposes Palantir’s role in the NHS, and the replies are published on the public transparency website WhatDoTheyKnow.

Palantir accused Medact of “slanted analysis” and of “misleading the public”. A spokesperson said the FDP is “objectively, a successful programme” and that it was designed to give trusts a set of tools they can use according to their own needs. The company said trusts including Chelsea and Westminster, Leicester, Northampton, Bath, North Cumbria, Croydon, Great Western, Dorset, Chesterfield, Ashford and St Peters and Norfolk have publicly praised the system. It also cited NHS data showing that trusts using the FDP carried out 117,000 additional operations and cut discharge delays for long-stay patients by 14.3%. The Guardian notes, however, that NHS England has added a caveat to those figures: it cannot draw conclusions about cause and effect, because other variables were not controlled for.

An NHS England spokesperson said 137 NHS trusts have now reported benefits from the tools on the platform.

Why it matters if you live in United Kingdom

If you are a patient in England, this is about how your health records are handled and who handles them. The Guardian reports that more than 44,000 people have filed legal objections to their health data being shared with, stored in or used by the FDP. Dr Nicola Byrne, the government’s national data guardian for health and social care, has urged ministers to give substantial weight to the “trust factor” when deciding Palantir’s future. She said there was evidence that “a significant number of local organisations” were reluctant to adopt the platform, partly because of concerns about Palantir and partly because they preferred other solutions.

The findings also show that what happens to your data can depend on your local trust. Some trusts use the platform for waiting lists and theatre scheduling, while others have chosen not to use it at all. Because the freedom of information replies are public on WhatDoTheyKnow, you can check what an individual organisation has said.

For taxpayers, the question is value for money from a £330m contract. Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons science and technology committee, said the responses showed that “Palantir’s system is just not that good”. He argued that the NHS should instead develop shared standards so that each trust can keep its own software and still exchange data with others.

For people working in NHS data and technology, the debate is about whether the work stays in-house. Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne of Medact said the government should back “the highly skilled NHS data professionals who work alongside doctors and nurses”. Sophie Don, chief executive of the patient data company Voror, which bid unsuccessfully against Palantir, said there are “many home-grown systems” that could deliver more value.

What to watch next

The main thing to watch is the government’s decision on the break clause in the seven-year contract. The Guardian describes it as a crunch decision for Andy Burnham’s government. Two parliamentary select committees, including the Commons science and technology committee, have already urged ministers to end the contract.

Palantir is lobbying hard to keep it. Its senior vice-president, Tom Watson, a Labour peer and former minister who was appointed the company’s chief lobbyist last month, said that if other companies could do the job, “they would have taken part in free and open competition”. He also warned his former Labour colleagues not to let “mob rule … lead procurement practices”.

Public opposition is likely to remain part of the story. Protests have taken place outside Palantir’s UK headquarters in London and at St Thomas’ hospital. Campaigners have also pointed to the company’s contracts with the Israeli military and with Donald Trump’s homeland security forces, and to the involvement of its cofounder Peter Thiel, who said in 2023 that “The NHS makes people sick.” Ministers will have to weigh these concerns, Byrne’s advice and the disputed evidence on the platform’s results before they decide.

Source: The Guardian