Data Showing Palantir’s Positive Impact on NHS Riddled With Errors

Data supporting claims that Palantir’s technology has improved services for NHS patients is riddled with errors, several hospital trusts have admitted.  

​Amid fierce opposition to the spytech firm’s involvement in the UK’s public services, its supporters have cited NHS data showing Palantir’s technology helped reduce delays in discharging hospital patients by 15%.

​But an analysis by the Financial Times found that claim was based on underlying data showing a drop in discharge delays from hundreds of thousands to zero – something that is extremely unlikely to have actually occurred.

After this was highlighted by the newspaper, four NHS trusts admitted the data contains numerous errors.

Palantir works with police forces and militaries around the world and is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as in human rights abuses by federal immigration agents in the US.

​Its federated data platform is supposed to unify different data sources across the NHS to help it run its services more efficiently, but campaigners say giving the firm access to sensitive patient data poses too great a risk.  

They have called on the government to cancel the NHS’s £330m contract with the company, using a break clause that can be executed in 2027.

Last week MPs from the health and social care select committee also urged ministers to end the contract, citing doubts about the data platform’s performance.

Charles Tallack, former head of operational research and evaluation at NHS England, told the Financial Times that the evidence supporting Palantir’s impact on discharge delays looked “increasingly flimsy”.

The newspaper identified irregularities in acute discharge data for 42% of all NHS hospital trusts across four years.

The Office for Statistics Regulation has launched an investigation after a previous story by the newspaper revealed the NHS had admitted that figures it had provided about Palantir’s technology did not prove its effectiveness.