Palantir’s NHS sales pitch has hit a data snag after gains were traced to a handful of hospitals.
But according to the Financial Times some NHS performance improvements credited to Palantir appear to have been driven by a small number of trusts, according to data obtained by campaign group Foxglove.
The figures show some hospitals have carried out fewer operations since adopting the company’s Federated Data Platform. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounts for 84 per cent of the outpatient waiting list decline cited by the NHS across all 16 trusts using the platform.
For those not in the know, the US outfit won a £330 million (€382 million) contract in November 2023 to develop the FDP, which is meant to join up NHS data and improve patient outcomes.
Palantir’s NHS role has become increasingly controversial because of its ties to the US defence sector. A cross-party group of MPs this month urged ministers to trigger a 2027 break clause and seek a UK-based provider.
NHS England and Palantir claim the FDP has helped deliver more than 110,000 extra operations, cut discharge delays by 15 per cent and reduced waiting lists by 800,000 patients.
However, the FT’s analysis of NHS data obtained by Foxglove through a freedom of information request suggests the headline numbers are not what appears on the surface. Across five main claims, between one and five trusts account for more than half the claimed improvement.
Chelsea and Westminster accounts for 84 per cent of the 217,846 patients flagged for removal from outpatient waiting lists. These are patients the FDP judged no longer needed to be on the list.
The trust accounts for 25,584 of the 82,349 patients identified for removal from inpatient waiting lists. Sixteen of the other 36 trusts using the tool flagged fewer than 100 patients.
The national waiting list stood at 7.2 million in April, according to NHS England figures published last week. The data shows wide variation among hospitals using the platform. Almost a third of those using Palantir’s NHS data platform reported a decline in the number of operations performed.
Of the trusts using “Inpatient CCS”, the FDP tool for scheduling operations, 13 of 41 carried out fewer procedures after adopting the technology. That could be down to staffing shortages, trickier cases or pressure on beds. It could mean the software is not the miracle dashboard some people would like it to be.
Where trusts reported big gains, the figures were not adjusted for other factors such as extra staff or weekend clinics. NHS England says it cannot “draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for”. The figures are still widely used to justify Palantir’s kit.
Documents show Chelsea and Westminster, one of the FDP’s pilot sites, received about £3 million (€3.5 million) from the Department of Health and Social Care between 2023 and 2025 to support FDP implementation. During that period, Chelsea and Westminster joint chair Matthew Swindells was acting as an adviser to Palantir through the now-defunct lobbying firm Global Counsel, according to the FT. Swindells served on Palantir’s health advisory board from September 2019 until April 2022. He has previously denied any conflict of interest.
He said he had been “very open” about his business interests outside of the NHS, and followed the NHS’s robust governance requirements carefully.
Nuffield Trust deputy director of research Sarah Scobie said the specific claims about the FDP’s contribution “always seemed premature”.
“Changes in waiting lists and the use of theatres are very complex and down to many factors and not just one IT programme. For waiting lists, even improvements could simply mean that patients who didn’t need to be on the list were identified better, rather than signalling that more care was provided on time.
“That said, a slowdown in trusts adopting new systems is reasonably common and this doesn’t mean it won’t eventually be an effective system.”
Foxglove head of strategy Tim Squirrell, who has campaigned against Palantir’s NHS role, said the company could not pick only the flattering bits.
“Palantir can’t have it both ways. If it expects us to believe that the FDP is responsible for improvements in some hospitals, it must also accept that things are getting worse as a result of its tools in others.”
Palantir head of UK health partnerships Stephen Childs said: “We are always striving to improve and one part of that is to apply the lessons from those trusts who are seeing the best results from the software to other trusts where adoption may be slower.
“But we should be clear that the recent history of technology in the NHS has, by the government’s own admission, seen us fall behind, exacerbated by various failed programmes, often at great expense to the taxpayer.
