NHS England removes list of hospitals said to benefit from Palantir

NHS England removed a claim from its website that 137 hospital trusts use Palantir’s platform for managing health data and benefit from it. The move came after The Guardian found that 29 trusts had not launched the system or barely used it. With the Office for Statistics Regulation reviewing the claims, ministers are deciding whether to extend the £330 million Palantir contract through 2029.

NHS England removed list of hospitals said to benefit from Palantir

Why the list disappeared

NHS England described 137 organisations as “connected” to its Federated Data Platform (FDP) and already benefiting from it. The system was developed to improve treatment outcomes, make operating theatres more efficient and speed up patient discharges. But 29 trusts said the platform had not been launched at their organisations or that they did not use any of its applications. The previous list of hospitals was apparently removed afterward.

The website now has a less detailed page, saying that early users are already reporting less administrative work, faster patient pathways and more time to spend on care.

The list was removed after research by the group Medact, which sent freedom of information requests to every hospital and integrated care board in England.

Medact spokesperson and NHS doctor Rhiannon Miranya Osborne said the removal of the pages was a relief, but noted that it followed several investigations finding NHS England’s claims unreliable. She said the question remained why the department had used unreliable data for years when describing the supposed benefits of Palantir’s software.

Dispute over benefits and contract renewal

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is reviewing NHS claims about the scale of the platform’s use. It previously warned NHS England that it had no evidence the technology had helped deliver more than 100,000 additional operations. The OSR also pointed to a lack of evidence for the claim that the FDP had enabled 117,000 additional operations.

Labour MP Ben Coleman, a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, called it alarming that NHS England had first listed 137 trusts as benefiting from the platform, then apparently removed the list after 29 organisations reported that they used few or none of its capabilities. Coleman said unsupported claims undermine trust and could put hospitals off the FDP, threatening its future.

Coleman is urging the NHS to drop Palantir and build an open health data platform that trusts and British technology companies could use to develop tools.

The Palantir contract was signed to help NHS England manage large volumes of health data. Opponents of the deal—including campaigners, MPs and doctors’ unions—say the system’s effectiveness has been overstated. Some also object to a company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, a supporter of Donald Trump, working in healthcare. Palantir also works with the Israeli military and the US administration on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s (ICE) crackdown on illegal immigration.

Who opposes the deal

Last week, reports said ministers planned to extend Palantir’s contract amid active lobbying. The US company hired Lord Tom Watson, a former Labour politician, as an in-house lobbyist. He recently wrote to Health Secretary Yvette Cooper saying Palantir was ready to help the UK “build sovereign tech capability”.

The healthcare workers’ union Unison urged ministers to end the contract instead. General secretary Andrea Egan told The Guardian that an extension would be completely unacceptable and would betray staff and patients.

Palantir argues that ending the contract would mean putting politics ahead of patients. Egan, by contrast, described the company as a US firm with a troubling record on surveillance. She said giving it a major NHS contract puts the country’s control over its most sensitive data at risk and creates security concerns.

Doctors Association UK, Medact, Amnesty UK and Just Treatment have also opposed a possible extension. They wrote to the prime minister and Yvette Cooper objecting to the reported plan to give Palantir another two years to prepare a transition to British companies’ technology. The letter’s signatories said the contract could be safely ended in 2027, using the transition assistance period included in the agreement to help trusts move away from Palantir’s technology.

The signatories warned that ministers could appear to contradict themselves if they talked about a future without Palantir while also giving the company another two years to strengthen its position in the health system. NHS England did not respond to The Guardian’s requests for comment.

Dataist’s take: The dispute is about both the reliability of claims about the FDP’s benefits and the terms for moving to another platform. NHS England removed the list after hospitals raised concerns, but has not commented on the decision; whether to extend the £330 million contract remains an open question.