The argument over Palantir’s role in the National Health Service is no longer only about software. It is about whether a national health system should standardize around one American technology provider, or whether local alternatives can do the job with more flexibility and public trust.
That question has become sharper because Greater Manchester, one part of England’s NHS, has repeatedly refused to adopt Palantir’s federated data platform, known as the FDP. Its health care board says it already has a homegrown system that does what it needs, and in some areas does it better.
A national deal under pressure
In 2023, the UK commissioned Palantir to build the NHS federated data platform, a system intended to ingest and organize health data produced across the country. The deal is worth more than $400 million, and the UK government has six months to decide whether to terminate it early.
According to Palantir and the NHS, the FDP is already cutting wait times, reducing the length of hospital stays, and helping make better use of operating theatres. Supporters describe it as a way to bring order to a health system that has long relied on a mix of digital systems, spreadsheets, paper, and whiteboards.
The need for better data sharing is clear from the source material. When patients move between care settings, treatment records can be left behind, sometimes with deadly consequences. Without a more connected system, NHS administrators have had to make funding and resource decisions using an incomplete patchwork of information.
But Palantir’s wider profile has complicated the NHS project. Its technology has been deployed in theatres of war and in the US administration’s immigration crackdown. In the UK, the NHS deal has drawn protests, petitions, parliamentary inquiries, and a reported rebellion among NHS workers.
What the FDP is supposed to do
The NHS began rolling out the FDP in early 2024. The platform includes a national pool of health data designed to identify care deficiencies, plus local databases that regions can use for their own analysis and tools.
Those local tools might support areas such as waitlist management or discharge planning. Because the parts share the same underlying technology scaffolding, the idea is that a tool built in one part of the country could be adopted elsewhere more easily.
“You can lift and shift. That’s the real power of the FDP,” says Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant who previously oversaw the national-level FDP rollout as deputy director of data engineering at NHS England. “The other advantage is that you’ve got a surface for artificial intelligence to work across.”
Within the NHS, two types of organizations can access the FDP. Trusts run hospitals and local care, while integrated care boards, or ICBs, plan and commission health care services at a regional level. Both use data in different ways, but both are working toward better patient care.
NHS figures show 139 of roughly 200 trusts are currently “live” with Palantir’s technology. They also show that 35 of England’s 36 ICBs are actively using the system. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care tells WIRED: “It is clear that thousands more patients are benefitting from the FDP every month.”
Greater Manchester’s different path
Greater Manchester is the exception that has become politically important. The region’s ICB, which covers a population of around 3 million, has stuck with its own Analytics and Data Science Platform, or ADSP.
At a meeting in May 2025, despite pressure from the national unit of the NHS to adopt Palantir’s technology, the board concluded that its “local capability exceeds anything the FDP currently offers” and that some of its functionalities are “two–three years” ahead.
Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, argues that the question is not only technical. He tells WIRED: “[Even] a technically strong platform will struggle to realize value if clinicians, data controllers, patients or the public do not trust it.” He adds: “If we were to fully adopt the FDP … it would be a retrograde step.”
The ADSP is fed with primary care data that is not available on Palantir’s platform, according to the source. Greater Manchester also argues that, because the system was developed in-house, it can be changed more easily when components need to be replaced.
“Because the ADSP is a collection of technologies, if we found that our data visualization software had become less than best in class, we could swap it out,” Hennessey tells WIRED.
Greater Manchester also says years of local development have helped build public trust. That matters because platforms handling sensitive health data depend on people being willing to share the information needed for the system to function.
The dispute over evidence and alternatives
Palantir disputes the idea that Greater Manchester’s system proves the NHS does not need the FDP. The company says there is scant independent evidence that the ADSP has directly improved patient care or saved costs, and it argues that its own platform is widely trusted.
“Thousands of doctors, nurses, and other NHS staff use the [FDP], with many on the record as to its benefits,” Stephen Childs, head of health care partnerships at Palantir UK, tells WIRED.
There is also disagreement about how much Greater Manchester’s trusts are using the FDP. Sources cited in the source article claim they are using it only for limited purposes. Andy Haywood, chief digital and data officer at research institute Health Innovation Manchester, says: “They’re not going all in.” Palantir claims that trusts in Greater Manchester are using the FDP extensively.
This matters because the national debate turns on whether Greater Manchester is a working alternative or a narrower case. Supporters of the FDP argue that there is no viable alternative to Palantir that can connect data across the country and across the NHS’s many parts, from trusts to ICBs to national bodies.
They also argue that comparing the FDP with ADSP only at the care board level misses the FDP’s potential value in hospitals and other settings where treatment is delivered.
“The claim that the ADSP achieves superior results really doesn’t make sense … [The FDP] does completely different things,” says Bartlett.
Why the decision matters
The political pressure is now tied to the contract’s break clause. In June, a bipartisan group of UK politicians published a report warning that reliance on Palantir represents an “unacceptable point of weakness” and gives a single foreign vendor overwhelming leverage. The report argued that the government should activate the break clause and seek domestic alternatives.
The following month, a separate parliamentary committee made similar arguments, drawing on testimony from Hennessey about Greater Manchester. MP Layla Moran, chair of the committee, wrote: “[Palantir] is evidently not the only show in town.”
The decision facing the UK government is therefore bigger than whether one region’s platform is better than another. It is a choice about trust, dependency, national coordination, and how much local control the NHS should preserve while trying to fix long-running data problems.
Greater Manchester has not ended the argument over Palantir. But by saying no, it has given politicians a concrete example to point to as they ask whether the rest of the NHS must follow the same path.