NHS organisations caring for millions of people across England are rejecting Palantir’s patient data technology, according to freedom of information responses that show health bosses believe they can find better or equal alternatives. The responses, reviewed by The Guardian, reveal that 16 trusts and health boards have declared they do not use the Palantir NHS federated data platform since its introduction in March 2024.
The Palantir NHS platform, a 330 million pound system operated by the controversial U.S. data company, was intended to knit together the health service’s fragmented records and help managers cut waiting lists and schedule surgery more efficiently. Some health bodies say it has delivered on that promise. But from Gateshead to Truro, others say they have declined to adopt it or have trialled it and reverted to their old systems.
Why trusts are turning away the Palantir NHS platform
The reasons given in the FOI responses are strikingly consistent: the system does not do enough that local tools do not already do. The University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS trust said it would not use the platform primarily 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 system, while Humber Teaching NHS foundation trust said simply: “We have no plans to use it.”
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust, which cares for more than 2 million people, cited “limited expected benefit over existing solutions”. The Avon and Wiltshire mental health partnership said it had yet to find a platform tool that offered significantly more than its existing capabilities, and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough trust said the system had “not offered significant improvements on local systems”. A Suffolk trust said other systems “supercede” the platform’s functionality, while Greater Manchester’s care board called the Palantir NHS system “duplicative” and “retrograde”.
Medact, the health campaign that gathered the Palantir NHS responses through the WhatDoTheyKnow transparency site, says the pattern shows frontline organisations do not consider the platform worth the disruption of adoption. Supporters of the deal counter that uneven rollout is normal for national IT programmes and that the benefits will compound as more trusts connect their data.
Supporters point to Palantir NHS waiting-list gains
The picture is not uniformly negative. Some health bodies told The Guardian the Palantir NHS platform had made it easier to manage waiting lists and improved surgery scheduling. Palantir says the system has helped deliver 110,000 additional operations and a 15.3 per cent reduction in discharge delays across the NHS organisations using it. The company’s senior vice-president and lobbyist Tom Watson has argued that rival suppliers had a fair chance during the open procurement process, and that the firm won the contract on merit.
The disclosures come as the government weighs whether to exercise a break clause in its seven-year deal with Palantir. Two parliamentary committees have urged ministers to end the contract, and critics including Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne of the health campaign Medact, which gathered the FOI responses and published them on the transparency site WhatDoTheyKnow, argue the data prove safe alternatives exist and the government has no excuse to extend the arrangement. Campaigners have also protested against Palantir’s wider work, including contracts with the Israeli military and U.S. homeland security agencies, and the company’s co-founder Peter Thiel’s 2023 remark that “the NHS makes people sick”.
What the Palantir NHS row means for the contract
The dispute highlights a widening split between a centralised procurement strategy in Whitehall and the practical realities on hospital floors. Interoperability campaigners such as Martin Wrigley argue the NHS should prioritise open standards over a single supplier, so that local systems can share data without every trust being locked into one platform.
The Palantir NHS dispute is likely to shape how other countries structure health-data contracts, as governments watch whether London doubles down on a platform its own trusts are rejecting. For the government, the decision is both financial and political: walking away from a 330 million pound deal would be an admission that the flagship data programme has failed to win over the organisations it was built to serve, while staying the course risks pouring more public money into a Palantir NHS platform that a growing number of trusts say they neither want nor need. Beyond one contract, Palantir presents the federated data platform as a flagship public-sector win it can sell to other governments, while NHS leaders must decide whether a system rejected by so many trusts can credibly serve as the service’s data backbone.