NHS asks Palantir to clear future benefit claims for Federated Data Platform

NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey plans to tell Palantir to clear future claims about the benefits of its Federated Data Platform with his team. He told the Health and Social Care Committee that this requirement may be hard to enforce contractually. The move follows repeated questions about evidence used to promote the £330 million platform.

Palantir told to share benefit claims

Labour MP Ben Coleman said NHS England had cautioned against attributing improvements directly to the platform, while newly appointed Palantir UK senior vice president Tom Watson was making claims that Palantir was making a difference. Mackey said he would write to Palantir and tell it that it must share with NHS England and clear with NHS England any benefits claimed in the future. He said Palantir should share them, but contractually it looked hard to enforce.

Questions over platform evidence

The planned letter follows repeated questions about the evidence NHS England and Palantir have used to promote the Federated Data Platform. NHS England awarded the £330 million contract to a Palantir-led consortium in November 2023 to help improve planning and efficiency. In July, campaign group Foxglove wrote to the UK health minister questioning figures used in Parliament to justify the contract, and the Office for Statistics Regulation also began examining the evidence.

NHS England said that as of June, 139 trusts used the platform, with 137 reporting benefits. It said an Inpatient Care Coordination Solution tool based on the platform had helped hospitals perform procedures on an additional 111,589 patients. However, a Freedom of Information request later found that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir's health data platform were performing fewer patient procedures than before it went live.

Caveats and rebuttals

Later that month, the Office for Statistics Regulation said NHS England had accepted that it needed to communicate its claims about platform performance more clearly. The regulator noted that NHS England had published on its website a caveat saying that it could not draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables had not been controlled for. Last month, Watson sought to rebut what he described as misinformation about the platform, repeating the statement that 137 trusts were already reporting benefits without mentioning the caveats.

In a statement on X, Watson said the regulator had pointed out that there had not yet been a study on the platform that controls for other factors like staffing level changes or industrial action, calling that a fair note of caution. In a prepared video, he said Northampton General Hospital, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital had all produced figures showing they are benefiting from using the platform. He said Palantir could not prove that every one of those procedures happened because of its software, but asked whether that meant hospitals' statements should be ignored.

Independent evaluation

In February 2026, NHS England awarded a contract to Imperial College Projects to independently evaluate the platform. The findings are not expected until after ministers decide whether to extend the contract, which currently ends in March 2027.

Sources: The Register