Over 20 NHS Trusts have stopped using Palantir's FDP waiting list tools
Published: 05/10/2026
| Financial Times
More than 20 NHS trusts in England have stopped using waiting list tools developed by US technology firm Palantir, according to a Financial Times (£) analysis of Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) responses obtained via the WhatDoTheyKnow website.
The findings challenge NHS England (NHSE) claims that two hospital co-ordination tools available within the £330 million Federated Data Platform (FDP) identified over 300,000 patients for removal across 40 trusts. The FT's analysis reveals that over half of these organisations no longer utilise the inpatient or outpatient solutions. In response, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) launched a fresh investigation into NHSE's FDP performance metrics, after previously scrutinising discrepancies that prompted NHSE to add caveats acknowledging that pre- and post-adoption comparisons do not demonstrate efficacy.
The FT's analysis also identified significant issues concerning NHSE's claim that 1.2 million patients were removed from waiting lists via the FDP referral-to-treatment tool. Over 60% of the 31 cited trusts could not quantify the tool's benefits, 6% reported non-usage, and several observed that removals could not be directly credited to Palantir or would have occurred via legacy infrastructure.
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