Why Palantir’s role in the NHS terrifies my patients
The tech giant’s role in US immigration raids and the destruction of Gaza shows it cannot be trusted, argues NHS doctor Ammad Butt
As an NHS doctor, the use of software designed by the global tech surveillance firm Palantir in the UK health system frightens me. I am not the only one: a coalition of human rights, health and patient organisations has condemned the use of the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), which is built on the Palantir product Foundry.
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The briefing, released by the health justice organisation Medact, has garnered support from rights organisations such as the Good Law Project and Amnesty International and urges trusts to go against a directive to use the FDP.
The FDP has been a notorious topic in the NHS in recent years. Ever since the £330m deal was announced in 2023, it has come under immense scrutiny: the Good Law Project had to fight to bring clarity on what this contract involved, while organisations such as the British Medical Association have cited concerns around how FDP would use patient data. Palantir has repeatedly stated that patient details such as health and treatment information will not be for sale.
The NHS itself has published outlines on how the FDP will supposedly process patient data in various formats to make the health service more streamlined. It is now operating in 150 NHS organisations — for example, reducing the burden on doctors in producing discharge summaries, with which many of my colleagues would likely agree they need support. However, one recent study found that an AI tool developed by an NHS trust for use alongside the FDP to create discharge summaries resulted in 18% of letters containing potentially harmful errors, including adding new medications that were not in the original discharge summary.
The public seems to understand the risk Palantir brings. As of February 2026, 47,000 NHS patients had emailed their local trust boards complaining about their involvement with the FDP.
But all this is only half the issue. Palantir also has yet to answer for its involvement in supporting the Israeli military during the genocide in Gaza. The public aren’t blind to this, either; this week while walking down my local street in Moseley, I came across a poster on an old electrical box stating “Palantir Kills” and criticising its use in Britain.
Sure enough, Palantir’s co-founder and current chief executive, Alex Karp, last year said: “Palantir is here to disrupt… and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” These are words that will hardly instil trust for patients in the NHS.
What truly worries me, however, is how this will affect migrant patients in the NHS — the people who often ask me to help not only with their medical problems, but with the confusing additional forms they are made to fill in, knowing that mistakes can lead to them waiting longer. (Even prior to Covid, migrants were having to wait an average 37 weeks to access NHS care after diagnosis, compared with the 18-week target that was met for 80% of British patients at the time.)
In January, it came to light that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were using an app developed by Palantir — using healthcare records from the Department of Health and Human Services — to target migrants in detention raids. Just a month later, Reform UK announced it had plans to create a knock-off ICE if it came to power in Britain, with the policy document stating it would use a variety of data sources including information from the NHS.
Palantir, then, offers two issues for the price of one. One is of morality — a service that was designed to see and treat all as equals should not acquiesce to the demands of a surveillance company whose software is designed to isolate the individual on characteristics such as race and migration status. The second is the physical risk. Patient data contains the most intimate details about our personal lives, and access is limited to those who have years of training and experience to handle such a responsibility. Palantir’s track record shows it does not have the credibility for this privilege. It should be excised from the NHS before it causes real harm.
