Palantir's £330 million contract to provide the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) has come under scrutiny, with internal NHS data suggesting "no meaningful difference between FDP adopters and non-adopters." A study published in BMJ Health Care Informatics in March linked FDP implementation to theatre utilization improvements at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital in January 2022. However, critics argue this conflates correlation with causation and that the improvements may reflect post-pandemic recovery rather than the FDP, especially since the baseline performance period ended during the Omicron wave when trusts faced severe disruption digitalhealth.net.
Despite Palantir's claims that its technology has led to 110,078 additional patient procedures and nearly 7% more cancer patients receiving answers within 28 days theregister.com, some NHS trusts are expressing concerns. Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, a "mega trust" overseeing seven hospitals, stated it would "lose functionality rather than gain it" by adopting the FDP for some use cases theregister.com. Additionally, an internal NHS briefing revealed that Palantir's platform is "slow and clunky" with a "poor user experience," being eight to ten times slower at analyzing data than the current NHS tool, taking 4-5 minutes compared to 30 seconds democracyforsale.substack.com.
The FDP contract, awarded to Palantir in November 2023 after previous uncontested deals totaling £60 million, is currently under review by ministers. This review is welcomed by experts who criticize the decision to outsource such a critical system, suggesting the UK has the skills to build its own NHS data systems, which could benefit the wider tech and healthcare economy thetimes.com, theregister.com. While NHS England stated over 120 NHS trusts had signed up and 72 were live, figures indicate fewer than a quarter (45) of England's 215 hospital trusts were actively using the FDP by the end of 2024 theregister.com.
