The Only English County Rejecting Palantir

The UK government has a six-month window to determine whether to end a contract exceeding $400 million between the National Health Service and the American software firm Palantir. With one division of the NHS already forgoing Palantir’s services, lawmakers are questioning why the rest of the country cannot do the same.

In 2023, the UK tasked Palantir with creating a “federated data platform” (FDP) designed to consolidate and organize the complex health data generated nationally. According to Palantir and the NHS, the system is already reducing wait times and shortening hospital stays while optimizing the use of operating rooms.

However, as Palantir’s technology is employed in military conflicts and amidst the US government’s immigration policies, its partnership with the NHS has sparked significant controversy in the UK, triggering protests, petitions, parliamentary investigations, and reported dissent among NHS staff. Other European countries, increasingly at odds with the Trump administration, are also reassessing their ties with Palantir to lessen their reliance on American technology.

The health board for Greater Manchester has consistently rejected the adoption of Palantir’s FDP, opting instead for an internally developed platform that has been in the works for nearly a decade. The board argues that it does not require Palantir’s services, asserting that its own platform is more effective and enjoys greater public trust. “[Even] a technically strong platform will struggle to realize value if clinicians, data controllers, patients or the public do not trust it,” explains Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, to WIRED. “If we were to fully adopt the FDP … it would be a retrograde step.”

This assertion—contested by Palantir and proponents of the FDP—has contributed to a nationwide discourse about whether the government should take the opportunity next February to terminate the NHS contract early, rather than allowing it to extend until 2031.

For years, NHS personnel have relied on a mix of digital systems, spreadsheets, paper, and whiteboards to manage patient information. Sometimes, when patients transition from one care environment to another, their treatment records are inadvertently left behind, which can lead to severe consequences. Lacking an effective means for various care providers to exchange information, NHS administrators have had to make funding and resource allocation decisions based on an incomplete array of data. The FDP aims to rectify this issue.

The NHS began the rollout of the FDP in early 2024. The platform comprises a national health data repository intended to help identify care gaps, along with numerous local databases that regions can utilize to conduct analyses and create tools tailored to their specific needs—such as waitlist management or discharge planning. All components share a common technological foundation, ideally enabling tools developed in one area to be easily implemented in another.

“You can lift and shift. That’s the real power of the FDP,” asserts Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant who previously managed the national FDP rollout as deputy director of data engineering at NHS England. “Another benefit is that it provides a framework for artificial intelligence to operate across.”

Within the extensive NHS, two categories of organizations are able to access the FDP: trusts that manage hospitals and local care, and integrated care boards (ICBs), which are tasked with planning and commissioning health care services at the regional level. While both utilize data for different objectives, they share the ultimate aim of enhancing patient care.