NHS England deletes ‘misleading’ claim 137 trusts benefiting from Palantir AI tools

Exclusive: The Guardian revealed 29 hospital trusts were not or hardly using the controversial patient data tech

NHS England has deleted a claim from its website stating 137 hospital trusts are benefiting from Palantir’s AI health data system after the Guardian revealed 29 of them were not using all or most of the controversial technology.

Health bosses had published a list of all the NHS bodies “live” with and “realising benefits” from the AI-powered federated data platform (FDP), a system set up to improve patient outcomes, boost operating theatre efficiency and speed up bed discharges. But after 29 trusts said it was either not live or they were not using any of its applications, the original list of hospitals appears to have been taken down.

The move comes as ministers weigh up whether to extend Palantir’s £330m contract to 2029 and after the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) said it was examining the NHS claims about the extent of the system’s use, which critics say make it appear more embedded in the health service than it actually is.

A less detailed page now says early users were “already seeing real results – reduced admin, faster patient pathways, and more time for care”. A senior Labour MP, calling for the contract to be scrapped, warned the move threatened public trust.

Palantir was hired to help manage vast quantities of medical data held by NHS England but campaigners, MPs and doctors’ unions want the deal scrapped – often arguing its effectiveness has been overstated. NHS England was previously warned by the OSR that it has no evidence to support a claim that the technology has helped deliver more than 100,000 extra operations.

Some Palantir opponents also object to the presence in the health service of a company, founded by the Donald Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, which also works for the Israeli military and the US administration’s ICE immigration crackdown.

The Labour MP Ben Coleman, a member of the Commons health and social care select committee, said it was “troubling” that NHS England had listed the 137 trusts as benefiting from FDP, but then “apparently pulled the list when 29 said they weren’t using all or most of it”.

“When NHS England makes claims like this without checking them, it destroys trust – and it has happened before,” he added. “The statistics watchdog warned there was no evidence for the NHS’s claim of 117,000 extra operations due to the FDP. This latest overclaim could put more hospitals off using the FDP and threaten its viability.”

Coleman wants the NHS to drop Palantir and develop an open platform for health data on which NHS trusts and British tech companies can build tools instead.

The decision to take down the list of NHS trusts came after the Medact campaign group researched the use of Palantir’s technology by sending freedom of information requests to every hospital and integrated care board in England.

“It’s a relief to see these webpages taken down, but this has only happened after multiple investigations exposed the misleading nature of NHS England’s claims,” said Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne, an NHS doctor and Medact spokesperson. “The question remains, why did NHSE [NHS England] spend years using shaky evidence to promote the alleged ‘benefits’ of Palantir software?”

Last week it was reported ministers planned to extend Palantir’s deal, amid intense lobbying. The US company has hired the Labour peer Tom Watson as a full-time lobbyist and he recently wrote to Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, saying Palantir wanted to help “build Britain’s sovereign technological capability”.

Meanwhile, the health workers’ union Unison has called on ministers to instead end the contract with its general secretary, Andrea Egan, telling the Guardian any decision to extend the deal would be “completely unacceptable and a betrayal of staff and patients”.

Palantir has said ending its contract would be “putting politics above patients”, but Egan called it a “sinister American surveillance firm”, and said that allowing it to hold a vital NHS contract “surrenders sovereignty over our most sensitive data and poses security risks”.

Groups including the Doctors Association UK, Medact, a health justice campaign group, Amnesty UK and Just Treatment, a patients’ group, have also this week written to the prime minister, Andy Burnham, and Cooper opposing Labour’s reported plan to give Palantir a further two years to allow time for a transition to UK-based technology.

They say the deal could be safely ended in 2027 using an aspect of the contract called the “termination assistance period” to allow NHS trusts to transition away from Palantir’s technology.

“Ministers could risk looking as if they were saying one thing and doing another if they said they were planning for a future without Palantir while simultaneously handing it two more years to embed itself further into our health service,” the group said.

NHS England did not respond to requests for comment.