NHS told to show its working on Palantir platform benefits

A campaign group has written to the UK health minister to force him to clarify data used by the government in Parliament to justify its controversial £330 million investment in a data-sharing system supported by Palantir. The Register understands that the UK's regulator for the use of statistics in the public sector is assessing how the government is using data to justify its use of Palantir technology. The move follows an investigation challenging claims by NHS England that as of June, 139 trusts used the Federated Data Platform (FDP), with 137 reporting benefits. An Inpatient Care Coordination Solution (CCS) tool based on the FDP had resulted in 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theatres, it said. However, a Freedom of Information request from campaign group Foxglove later found that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir's health data platform were performing fewer patient procedures than before it went live. Foxglove also said Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounted for 84 percent of the reported fall in outpatient waiting lists, while only 16 trusts were using the tool provided by the US firm. Writing to James Murray, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Foxglove noted that NHS England had said in documentation that it was inappropriate to "draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for" in its published FDP data. Foxglove said: "The claim that Palantir's FDP has delivered a large number of additional operations has been widely repeated." In June, health minister Preet Kaur Gill said in a written response to Parliament: "Since March 2024, more than 100,000 additional patients have been supported to undergo procedures in theatres partly by increasing theatre utilisation." The minister made a similar claim to the Health Select Committee later that month, and at no point did she mention NHS England's admission that this claim cannot be substantiated, Foxglove pointed out. Writing for Foxglove, advocacy director Donald Campbell asked why a "clarification had not been made to Parliament or in other public ministerial statements." The Office for Statistics Regulation, the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority, said it was assessing the information around NHS England's claims about the FDP's performance. In a statement to the Health Service Journal, an NHS England spokesperson said: "We have received correspondence from the Office for Statistics Regulation and will be responding in due course. "The published benefits have always been a comparison of performance before and after the adoption of the NHS federated data platform, and we regularly review the published information and provide updates where needed." The UK government said the £330 million FDP was vital to improving NHS productivity and recovering from the long waiting lists for elective care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Palantir's work with the NHS began began with a £1 deal in 2020, which later led to a total of £60 million in contracts awarded without competition during the pandemic. In April, the government confirmed it was reviewing the use of a break clause in the current contract to end work with Palantir in February next year. However, then-junior health minister Zubir Ahmed defended the program, saying: "The NHS England Programme Team work with trusts and integrated care boards to understand their plans to maximize the benefits of the NHS FDP." In June, a cross-party committee of MPs said the government should ditch Palantir from its FDP contract because of vendor lock-in and the need to develop sovereign technology. ®