The Guardian reported that 29 NHS trusts listed by NHS England as benefiting from the Palantir-backed Federated Data Platform (FDP) said it was not live or they used none of its apps before a contract decision.
The Guardian said medical charity Medact gathered the responses through more than 100 freedom of information requests and shared them with the newspaper.
NHS England’s directory lists 142 trusts. A count on Nov. 2 found 137 entries in bold, the format the agency uses to identify trusts “realising benefits.” Those benefits can include back-office tools for data submission and analysis, along with products intended to support patient care.
The FDP connects data held across NHS systems, NHS England says. Each participating trust and integrated care board has its own instance and can choose which products to use. The Guardian’s report described Torbay and South Devon as a case where the trust said it was not using the platform operationally, while NHS England counted it as live because infrastructure supported data submission.
A House of Commons Library briefing published Oct. 29 said 142 of 202 acute, mental health, community and ambulance trusts were in live operational use in August 2026. It said 170 trusts had signed memorandums of understanding to join. The figures measure different stages of participation.
NHS England’s own caveat says its before-and-after comparisons could not establish cause and effect because they did not account for other variables; the Office for Statistics Regulation discussed that caveat in July.
NHS England awarded the contract in November 2023 to a consortium led by Palantir Technologies UK. The agreement has an initial three-year commitment ending in March 2027 and can run for up to seven years. The government must decide by December 2026 whether to extend it. The £330 million figure is a spending forecast, with payments tied to services consumed.
