Palantir’s NHS cancer-tracking app draws glowing reviews but a trickle of users

Official figures put uptake at just six trusts, while FoI responses raise questions about which are actually benefiting

Only a handful of NHS trusts are actually running the cancer app sitting atop the contentious £330 million Federated Data Platform (FDP) built and operated by Palantir, and freshly published numbers cast doubt on which organisations are genuinely gaining from it.

Cancer 360 was meant to consolidate cancer patient records scattered across isolated spreadsheets and separate electronic health record systems into one central view, making it easier for clinicians to triage and prioritise care.

Pilot deployments began four years ago, and trusts are not billed directly for use of the FDP. Even so, official figures put Cancer 360’s reach at somewhere between five and six trusts. Freedom of Information responses collected by the grassroots campaign group No Palantir in the NHS point to a gap between the benefits NHS England has claimed and what the underlying usage data shows.

In June 2025, NHS England asserted that Cancer 360 “drastically cut down diagnosis times,” citing a pilot at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust where the share of patients diagnosed within 28 days rose from 72 percent to 85 percent.

That trust started testing the platform in 2022 under a £23 million contract handed out without competition, before Palantir secured the wider FDP deal in late 2023. Critics have argued that the FDP procurement was compromised, noting that Palantir had already developed use cases under £60 million of non-competitive contracts that were subsequently folded into the FDP.

Last year, NHS England reported that Cancer 360 covered 46 registered teams and 239 active users, and had processed 52,000 patients.

In June 2026, NHS England stated that five trusts were using Cancer 360 as of March 2026, of which only two were recorded as deriving benefit. In July, health minister Preet Kaur Gill cited the same five-trust figure in a written Parliamentary answer.

Data published in October said six trusts were using Cancer 360 by June, with five counted as benefiting, though the figures named no trusts and offered no explanation for the rise. Those statistics have since been pulled from the NHS England website, but an archived copy remains available.

In a June response to a Freedom of Information request, NHS England said six trusts had recorded unique users signing in to the Cancer 360 app during the preceding 12 months.

Yet two trusts held up as having delivered successful pilots — Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and Royal United Hospitals Bath — appeared in NHS England’s reply as having had no unique users log into the system over that same window.

Both were nonetheless listed as having reaped benefits from the platform, according to an FoI response sent to campaign group Foxglove in June this year.

The Register asked both trusts and NHS England to account for the mismatch.

One of the six trusts said to be logging in, East Lancashire Hospitals, reported a single unique user. An FoI response issued in August subsequently confirmed that the trust was not live on the FDP. It had intended to adopt the platform, starting with Cancer 360, but had no go-live date for the app.

No Palantir in the NHS also flagged trusts that weighed up Cancer 360 and opted not to proceed.

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust reviewed the app but passed on it, telling the campaign group there was “no immediate requirement for it” in its FoI response.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said it had held back over unresolved metadata requirements, according to its own FoI reply.

Against that backdrop, national statistics on cancer diagnosis waiting times point to broader improvement across England. With Cancer 360 deployed so narrowly, those nationwide gains cannot be attributed to the app alone.

In July this year, the UK’s statistical regulator instructed NHS England to make sure ministers receive accurate briefings, following a dispute over the data used to advertise the supposed advantages of the Palantir-run FDP.

Foxglove had established that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir’s health data platform were carrying out fewer patient procedures than before go-live, and that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital alone accounted for 84 percent of the reported drop in outpatient waiting lists, against a backdrop of just 16 trusts running the FDP tool. The Office for Statistics Regulation opened an assessment of NHS England’s performance claims about the FDP, and the arm’s-length body subsequently added further caveats to its website.

The examination of the FDP’s claimed benefits lands as ministers weigh whether to extend the Palantir-led contract past February 2027. The original agreement ran for a term of up to seven years with a ceiling of £330 million.

Reports this week indicate the government is preparing to renew the deal while simultaneously launching a parallel procurement to identify an alternative supplier, as pressure builds to loosen reliance on a single vendor and strengthen sovereign technology capability.

Palantir was seeded with startup funding from a CIA-linked venture capital firm and has leaned on close relationships with US intelligence, military and immigration agencies throughout its history, even as its recent expansion into the commercial market stands out. ®

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