Greater Manchester rejects Palantir’s NHS data platform in favour of in-house system

The Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB) has become the sole English region to categorically refuse adoption of Palantir’s federated data platform (FDP) for the National Health Service (NHS). The board, which serves a population of approximately three million, has opted to retain its in-house Analytics and Data Science Platform (ADSP), a decision that has fuelled a national debate over the UK government’s multi-million dollar contract with the American software company.

At a meeting in May 2025, the board concluded that its local ADSP capability “exceeds anything the FDP currently offers” and is two to three years ahead in functionality. The ADSP is fed with primary care data not available on Palantir’s platform and can be reconfigured more easily, as it was developed in-house over the past decade. Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, noted that a technically strong platform struggles to realise value if clinicians and the public do not trust it, describing a full adoption of the FDP as a “retrograde step.”

NHS figures indicate that 139 of roughly 200 trusts and 35 of England’s 36 ICBs are currently using Palantir’s technology. However, sources claim that Greater Manchester trusts are using the platform only for limited purposes. Andy Haywood, chief digital and data officer at research institute Health Innovation Manchester, stated that while the region goes down as using the system on official spreadsheets, it is not putting all its data into the platform. Palantir disputes this, claiming that trusts in Greater Manchester are using the FDP extensively.

The regional rejection has intensified political scrutiny of the UK government’s $400 million contract with Palantir, which was commissioned in 2023 to ingest and organise health data across the country. In June, a bipartisan group of UK politicians published a report warning that reliance on Palantir represents an “unacceptable point of weakness,” recommending the government activate a break clause available in February to terminate the contract early. A separate parliamentary committee made similar arguments in July, drawing on testimony from Hennessey regarding the situation in Greater Manchester.

Proponents of the FDP argue that there is no viable alternative to Palantir’s ability to thread together data from across the country and the many sub-components of the NHS. Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant who previously oversaw the national-level FDP rollout, argued that breaking the contract risks squandering several years of progress, stating that trusts previously using paper would go back to paper. He described the political objections as interfering with attempts to assess the FDP’s true performance and value.

The Greater Manchester ICB acknowledged in April that it had not begun a scheduled review of its decision because public concerns regarding Palantir have heightened rather than diminished. The debate has been further complicated by Palantir’s broader political associations, with critics noting a “clear mismatch with UK values.” Hennessey argues that any value assessment must take into account the political heat surrounding Palantir, as its success hinges on the public’s willingness to feed it their data.