29 NHS Trusts Listed as Palantir AI Beneficiaries Not Using the System
NHS England claims dozens of trusts benefit from its £330m Palantir data platform, but the trusts say they aren't using it.
More than two dozen National Health Service hospital trusts publicly identified by NHS England as benefiting from Palantir's medical data platform are either not using the system at all or have deployed only a fraction of its capabilities, the Guardian has found.
NHS England lists 29 hospital trusts as "realising benefits" from the federated data platform, a £330 million AI-powered system built by the controversial data analytics firm Palantir. When contacted, those trusts indicated the platform was not live at their facilities or that none of its applications were in active use.
Read more A Wealthy Californian Makes the Case for the Billionaire Tax →
The disconnect between the official NHS narrative and the trusts' own accounts has drawn sharp criticism from within the health establishment. One senior health official described the characterization as "very misleading," signaling that concerns about transparency extend beyond outside observers to people inside the system itself.
The federated data platform has attracted scrutiny since its inception, with critics raising questions about patient data privacy, the scale of public spending, and the awarding of the contract to Palantir, a company with deep ties to defense and intelligence agencies. The latest findings suggest the operational rollout may be significantly less advanced than NHS England's public statements imply.
The gap between claimed and actual usage raises broader questions about accountability for large government technology contracts and how progress benchmarks are defined and communicated to the public. Continue reading at Business | The Guardian.
