Freedom of information responses from NHS trusts and health boards across England indicate that a number of those organisations have opted not to adopt Palantir's patient data platform, with leadership at several sites expressing the view that comparable or stronger options are available elsewhere.
Certain NHS bodies reported that the £330m federated data platform (FDP), operated by the US firm, had streamlined waiting-list management and brought greater efficiency to surgery scheduling. Across locations stretching from Gateshead to Truro, a number of organisations reported either opting against the technology altogether or piloting it before returning to their previous approaches.
Two NHS organisations raised concerns about the Federated Data Platform's capabilities — a Suffolk trust contending that rival systems offer greater functionality, and Greater Manchester's integrated care board characterising the Palantir product as both redundant and a step backwards.
At the heart of these responses lies a pending government decision on whether to activate a break clause within a seven-year contract between the NHS and Palantir — an arrangement put in place to unify health data across the system and lift both clinical precision and operational efficiency.
Demonstrations targeting the American company have extended to its additional agreements with the Israeli armed forces and the homeland security apparatus under Donald Trump. Questions about the system's effectiveness remain contested, and freedom-of-information responses from more than two dozen bodies reveal that 16 NHS trusts and health boards reported not using it — a pattern that has drawn attention alongside broader unease about the role of a company whose co-founder, Peter Thiel, told an audience in 2023 that the health service causes illness rather than preventing it, with the platform having been rolled out across the NHS from March 2024.
Two NHS trusts are among those opting out of the programme — University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, whose representatives stated that the platform appears to offer no capabilities beyond those already in place, and Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust, whose leadership indicated the organisation would neither adopt nor go live with the FDP.
Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust indicated it had no intention of adopting the technology, while Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, which had trialled the system, reported that it delivered no meaningful advantage over the local tools already in place. Two further NHS trusts reported no intention of adopting the federated data platform tool — Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership stating that nothing on offer outperformed what it already had in place, while University Hospitals Birmingham, whose patient population tops two million, pointed to what it described as "limited expected benefit over existing solutions" as the basis for its position.
Medact, a health advocacy organisation, compiled the freedom of information requests and uploaded them to WhatDoTheyKnow, a publicly accessible transparency platform. The group holds a stated position against Palantir's involvement in the NHS.
Palantir's position, relayed by senior vice-president Tom Watson — a Labour peer and former government minister — has been that any organisation genuinely able to deliver the FDP would have put itself forward through the open competitive tender that was available for that purpose. Watson took on the role of Palantir's head lobbyist at a time when the arrangement was drawing pushback from various quarters. In an address to those who had served alongside him in Labour, he urged the party not to allow crowd pressure to dictate how procurement decisions are made.
Calls from two parliamentary select committees — among them the Commons science and technology committee — have pressed the government to bring Palantir's contract to a close. Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, argued that NHS boards' replies bore out his position — held over the past year — that the Palantir system had not performed adequately. He contended that the episode demonstrated why imposing a single centrally chosen solution on NHS trusts was unlikely to succeed, calling instead for a return to building interoperability standards that would allow each trust to operate its own software while enabling those systems to communicate with one another.
Medact spokesperson Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne stated that freedom-of-information disclosures pointed to viable alternatives being available, that a managed transition away from Palantir remained achievable, and that the government therefore had no justification for extending the contract. She added that, rather than delegating core NHS functions to large technology firms, public bodies ought to direct their support toward NHS-led innovation and the data professionals employed within the health service who work alongside clinical staff to serve patients.
Responding to the analysis published by Medact, a Palantir representative characterised it as partial in its approach and took issue with the public statements made around its release. The representative set out the company's position that the Federated Data Platform is built to serve NHS trusts by adapting its tools to the distinct operational needs and capacities of each organisation. The representative also drew attention to the programme's standing within the roughly one-in-five large government initiatives that carry a green delivery rating, referenced ministerial statements indicating the platform has exceeded its projected benefits and met every target assigned to it, and named Chelsea and Westminster, Leicester, Northampton, Bath, North Cumbria, Croydon, Great Western, Dorset, Chesterfield, Ashford and St Peters, and Norfolk as trusts that have made public statements of support for the platform.
NHS data cited by Palantir showed that trusts operating the FDP performed 117,000 more procedures than they would otherwise have done, while discharge hold-ups for long-stay patients fell by 14.3%. A note accompanying the figures from NHS England states that the data cannot establish cause and effect, given that other variables were left uncontrolled.
Dr Nicola Byrne, who holds the national data guardian post covering health and social care, called on ministers to place considerable weight on public trust when reaching a decision about Palantir's contract. Formal objections to the collection, retention, and use of personal health records by the FDP have been lodged by upwards of 44,000 individuals. Byrne pointed to evidence that a number of local organisations were holding back from adopting the FDP, with concerns about Palantir and a preference for alternative solutions driving that reluctance.
Sophie Don, the chief executive of Voror — a patient data company that entered the same procurement contest Palantir ultimately won — put forward the view that Palantir holds no exclusive capability to deliver the work in question. A source familiar with the matter noted that domestically developed systems could unlock considerably more value for the NHS than the platform offers. An NHS England spokesperson pointed to data showing 137 trusts had recorded tangible gains from the platform's toolkit, with staff using it to coordinate care delivery and operate more efficiently.
