Sixteen NHS trusts reject Palantir patient data platform

Sixteen NHS trusts and health boards across England have told freedom of information requests they do not use Palantir's federated data platform, according to more than two dozen FOI responses reviewed by the Guardian, throwing the £330m national contract into question years before it expires.

The platform was introduced in March 2024 under a seven-year deal intended to integrate the health service's data and improve clinical accuracy and efficiency. Some health bodies credit it with easing waiting-list management and surgery scheduling. But the FOI responses, gathered by the health campaign group Medact and posted to the transparency website WhatDoTheyKnow, show a broad belt of refusals from Gateshead to Truro. University Hospitals of North Midlands said it would not use the platform because "it does not appear to provide functionality over and above what we have already". Dorset HealthCare said it "will not be adopting or going live" with it. Humber Teaching NHS foundation trust was blunter: "We have no plans to use it."

University Hospitals Birmingham, which cares for more than two million people, cited "limited expected benefit over existing solutions". Cambridgeshire and Peterborough said it had trialled the system and found it offered no significant improvement on local tools. A Suffolk trust said other systems "supercede" the platform's functionality, and Greater Manchester's care board called it "duplicative" and "retrograde".

The refusals arrive as Andy Burnham's government weighs whether to exercise a break clause in the deal. Two parliamentary select committees, including the Commons science and technology committee, have urged the government to end the contract. Palantir has appointed Tom Watson, a Labour peer and former minister who served alongside Burnham, as its chief lobbyist; last week he warned his former colleagues not to let "mob rule … lead procurement practices", arguing that rivals claiming equal capability would have competed for the contract in open tender. Palantir has previously challenged claims that other software could match the platform.

Opposition to the deal has also focused on Palantir's contracts with the Israeli military and US homeland security agencies, and on its cofounder Peter Thiel, who said in 2023 that "the NHS makes people sick".

The trusts' verdicts carry a weight the protest movement outside Palantir's London headquarters never could: each refusal is a purchasing decision, made by bodies that compared the product against what they already run and found it wanting. The company's argument that no rival could have won an open competition now sits alongside sixteen procurement records suggesting nobody needed to win one — the incumbents were already there.