The health care board for Greater Manchester is the only one of England's 36 regional authorities to reject Palantir's federally commissioned data platform, sticking instead with a locally developed system it claims is functionally superior, according to a Wired report published this week. The UK government faces a decision next February on whether to end early a contract worth over $400 million between the National Health Service and the American software firm, a deal that runs through 2031 without intervention. The board's stance has fueled a national debate over whether Britain should sever ties with Palantir, particularly as the company's technology is deployed in military operations and US immigration enforcement.
NHS figures show 139 of roughly 200 hospital and care trusts are currently operating with Palantir's technology, while 35 of England's 36 integrated care boards actively use the system, which began rolling out in early 2024. Greater Manchester's care board, which serves a population of around 3 million, has repeatedly declined to adopt the platform, most recently at a May 2025 meeting where it concluded its local capability surpasses what Palantir currently offers and some functionalities are two to three years ahead. Sources claim that trusts within Greater Manchester are using Palantir for limited purposes only, though Palantir disputes this and asserts the trusts are using the platform extensively. The board acknowledged in April it had not begun a scheduled review of its decision because public concerns have intensified rather than diminished.
Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, told Wired that "even a technically strong platform will struggle to realize value if clinicians, data controllers, patients or the public do not trust it." The board claims its Analytics and Data Science Platform is fed with primary care data unavailable on Palantir's system and can be reconfigured more easily because it was developed in-house. Stephen Childs, head of health care partnerships at Palantir UK, countered that there is limited independent evidence to suggest Greater Manchester's platform has directly contributed to improving patient care or cutting costs. In June, a cross-party group of UK politicians published a report warning that reliance on Palantir represents an "unacceptable point of weakness," handing a single foreign vendor overwhelming leverage, while a separate parliamentary committee the following month drew on Hennessey's testimony to argue Palantir "is evidently not the only show in town."
Supporters of Palantir's platform argue that no viable alternative exists capable of connecting data across the country and the many subdivisions of the NHS, from trusts to care boards to national bodies. Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant who previously oversaw the national rollout as deputy director of data engineering at NHS England, told Wired that breaking the contract would mean trusts previously using paper records would revert to paper. But Hennessey maintains that any value assessment must account for the political scrutiny surrounding Palantir because the platform's success depends on the public's willingness to share data and doctors' willingness to use it. The February decision point represents a critical juncture for the NHS, which for decades has relied on a combination of digital systems, spreadsheets, paper, and whiteboards to track patients, sometimes leaving treatment records behind when patients move between care settings with occasionally deadly consequences. For health systems navigating vendor consolidation, the Greater Manchester case illustrates how procurement decisions increasingly hinge not just on technical performance but on institutional alignment and stakeholder confidence.