Stats watchdog prescribes stronger caveats for NHS Palantir claims

The UK's statistical regulator has told NHS England to ensure ministers are briefed accurately following a row over data used to promote the purported benefits of a Palantir-run platform. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) said the health quango had accepted that it needed to communicate more clearly about data purporting to measure the benefits of the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), which is based on the US spy-tech firm's technology under a £330 million contract. "We expect NHS England to ensure that any figures cited by ministers or in official briefings about the FDP and its effectiveness are communicated in a clear, accurate manner," the OSR said. Campaign group Foxglove called on health officials and ministers to correct the record with Parliament and the media on data used to illustrate the FDP's success. Earlier this month, the OSR, part of the UK Statistics Authority, said it was assessing how NHS England used data to make claims about the FDP's performance, which sometimes made its way into ministerial statements. The move followed a Freedom of Information request from Foxglove, which 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 Palantir. The results sit uneasily alongside NHS England's claim that, as of June, 139 trusts used the FDP, with 137 reporting benefits. Another commonly quoted data item found that an Inpatient Care Coordination Solution (CCS) tool based on the FDP had resulted in 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theaters. 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." At the time, the OSR said it was assessing the information around NHS England's claims about the FDP's performance. Publishing its response yesterday, the regulator said it had engaged NHS England statisticians and conducted its own desk research based on information provided by the NHS and others who raised concerns about data used to promote the FDP's benefits. It noted that on June 6, NHS England added a sentence to published data, which read: "We cannot therefore draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for." It also updated the methods page. "NHS England has told OSR that this was motivated, in part, by NHS England having received numerous Freedom of Information requests to provide more detail on how data provided by FDP was analysed," the OSR said. "While the addition of this sentence is welcome, we understand why many users took this to represent a significant change in how NHS England was communicating the benefits of FDP data in relation to NHS performance." The statement welcomed NHS England's decision to acknowledge that there is "more that can be done to strengthen messaging around the FDP benefits data and its onward interpretation by users." NHS England agreed to add further caveats to the published data and ensure public communications clearly identify before-and-after comparisons and explain that they do not establish causality. It has also commissioned Imperial College London to evaluate the FDP, looking at products including OPTICA "where the issue around causality is most evident." OPTICA is designed to streamline the patient discharge process. It was based on Palantir's technology built under a £60 million series of contracts awarded without competition and then transferred to the FDP. NHS England said it would publish the results. The OSR said it wanted to be kept informed of progress against a series of other commitments by NHS England's Head of Profession for Statistics. An NHS England spokesperson said: "We welcome this review from the Office for Statistics Regulation into the presentation and communication of information about the Federated Data Platform, which found the updates we made to our website have helped to make information more explicitly clear. We are implementing the recommendations in full to provide further clarity about the patient benefits being achieved through the use of the technology." Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said: "This damning report makes it clearer than ever that the Government and Palantir must withdraw these dodgy marketing claims and correct the record. "Even the head of NHS England has admitted personally raising doubts about the claims made on Palantir's benefits to the NHS. This intervention by the stats watchdog should be the nail in the coffin for the fairy stories we've heard about the extra operations supposedly delivered by Palantir's platform. "With a new government, there's a chance to draw a line under the previous administration's shameful practice of running marketing for this Trump-aligned tech giant. The new health secretary must withdraw these figures, correct the record with Parliament and the media, and ensure that the debate about whether Palantir should have a place in our NHS is conducted based on reliable, verifiable evidence – not spin." ® [Image text:] OPalantir PLTR LISTED NYSE GOTHAM NIDDY APOLLO