UK's NHS Contract with Palantir Faces Scrutiny

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has a $400 million contract with American software company Palantir to develop a "federated data platform" (FDP).

The FDP is meant to ingest and organize the tangle of health data produced across the country, cutting wait times and the length of hospital stays, and maximizing the use of operating theatres. However, the deal has become a flashpoint in the UK, drawing protests, petitions, parliamentary inquiries, and a reported rebellion among NHS workers.

One part of England, Greater Manchester, has repeatedly declined to adopt Palantir's FDP, choosing to stick with a home-spun platform developed over the best part of a decade. The board claims it doesn't need Palantir, that its own platform is functionally superior and more trusted by the public.

According to Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, "Even a technically strong platform will struggle to realize value if clinicians, data controllers, patients or the public do not trust it." The claim has fed into a national debate over whether the government should seize an opportunity next February to terminate the NHS contract early, instead of allowing it to run until 2031.

Greater Manchester ICB, which covers a population of around 3 million, has stuck with its homegrown Analytics and Data Science Platform (ADSP). At a meeting in May 2025, despite pressure from the national unit of the NHS to adopt Palantir's technology, the board concluded that its "local capability exceeds anything the FDP currently offers" and some of its functionalities are "two-three years" ahead.

The ADSP is fed with primary care data that is not available on Palantir's platform, and because the system was developed in-house, it can supposedly be reconfigured more easily. According to Hennessey, "Because the ADSP is a collection of technologies, if we found that our data visualization software had become less than best in class, we could swap it out."

Palantir says there is scant independent evidence to suggest the ADSP has contributed directly to improving patient care or saving costs-and that its own platform is widely trusted. However, the claim that Greater Manchester has developed a superior system in-house has nonetheless colored an ongoing debate over whether the UK government should break off Palantir's contract next February.

A bipartisan group of UK politicians published a report in June warning that the country's reliance on Palantir represents an "unacceptable point of weakness," handing a single foreign vendor overwhelming leverage. The report argued for the government to activate the break clause and seek out domestic alternatives.

Proponents of the FDP argue that, in reality, there is no viable alternative to Palantir, able to thread together data from across the country and the many sub-components of the NHS-from trusts to ICBs to national bodies. They argue MPs' calls to break the Palantir contract are based on a narrow assessment of the value the FDP can provide to care boards, compared to Greater Manchester's platform, and ignore its potential benefits in hospitals and other settings where treatment is administered.

The level of scrutiny directed at the Palantir deal compared to other expensive NHS projects signals political objections are interfering with attempts to assess the FDP's true performance and value, according to Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant.

Palantir has long insisted it is not a political organization. However, in 2023, Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel said the UK should "rip the whole [NHS] from the ground and start over." More recently, Palantir published a fiery bullet-point manifesto, based on a recent book by CEO Alex Karp, which one British MP described as "the ramblings of a supervillain."

The public debate around Palantir has also fed into Greater Manchester ICB's continued refusal to use the FDP. The care board acknowledges that the FDP is not the only show in town, and that there are other options available.

The NHS has a long history of using a combination of digital systems, spreadsheets, paper, and whiteboards to keep track of patients. Sometimes, when a patient moves from one care setting to another, their treatment records are left behind with occasionally deadly consequences. Without a way for different types of care providers to share information effectively, NHS administrators have had to base funding and resource allocation decisions on an incomplete patchwork of data.

The NHS began to roll out the FDP in early 2024. The platform consists of a national pool of health data meant to help identify care deficiencies, and a bunch of local databases that individual regions can use to perform analyses and develop tools specific to their needs-say, waitlist management or discharge planning.

The FDP has been adopted by 139 of roughly 200 trusts, while 35 of England's 36 ICBs are actively using the system. However, trusts in different pockets of England have resisted the FDP, including in Greater Manchester, where sources claim they are using it for limited purposes only.

Palantir claims that trusts in Greater Manchester are using the FDP extensively. However, the claim that Greater Manchester has developed a superior system in-house has nonetheless colored an ongoing debate over whether the UK government should break off Palantir's contract next February.

The UK government has six months to decide whether to terminate the deal. If one part of the NHS is already doing without Palantir, politicians are asking, why can't the rest of the country?

The FDP is meant to change all that. It is meant to thread together data from across the country and the many sub-components of the NHS-from trusts to ICBs to national bodies. However, the debate over whether the UK government should break off Palantir's contract next February continues.

The ADSP is a collection of technologies, and if the data visualization software had become less than best in class, it could be swapped out. The ADSP is fed with primary care data that is not available on Palantir's platform.