The UK government has six months to decide whether to terminate a deal worth more than $400 million between the country’s National Health Service and American software company Palantir. If one part of the NHS is already doing without Palantir, politicians are asking, why can’t the rest of the country?

In 2023, the UK commissioned Palantir to develop a “federated data platform” (FDP) that could ingest and organize the tangle of health data produced across the country. According to Palantir and the NHS, the new system is already cutting wait times and the length of hospital stays, and maximizing the use of operating theatres.

But lately, as Palantir technology is deployed in theaters of war and the US administration’s immigration crackdown, its deal with the NHS has become a flashpoint in the UK, drawing protests, petitions, parliamentary inquiries, and a reported rebellion among NHS workers. Other European nations, increasingly at loggerheads with the Trump administration, are also reevaluating their relationships with Palantir in a bid to minimize their dependence on US-made technology.

The health care board for one part of England, Greater Manchester, has repeatedly declined to adopt Palantir’s FDP, choosing to stick with a home-spun platform developed over the best part of a decade. The board claims it doesn’t need Palantir, that its own platform is functionally superior and more trusted by the public. “[Even] a technically strong platform will struggle to realize value if clinicians, data controllers, patients or the public do not trust it,” Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, tells WIRED.

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