60,000 people quietly told the NHS to stop using their medical records
In two months, 60,000 more patients in England blocked their health data from being used in research. A government minister says distrust of one company — Palantir — may be why.
There is a switch most people never touch. It is called the national data opt-out, and it lets you tell the NHS: treat me, but don't use my records for research and planning. Between mid-May and mid-July, 60,000 more people flipped it.
James Frith, the health innovation minister, put a name to what he thinks is happening. In a letter to Layla Moran, who chairs the Commons health committee, he said he was worried about "mistrust" of Palantir — the US defence and health tech company that runs the NHS federated data platform on a £330m contract — and "the impact it could have on people's willingness to share data with the NHS".
This is the rare case where you can see public suspicion of a single company turn into missing data. Opting out does not affect your own treatment: if you are on an operating table, your records are still used. What it removes is your file from the pile that researchers and planners work with. Fewer files, blurrier picture — of which treatments work, of where hospitals are failing, of who gets diagnosed late.
Frith called the rise "modest" and said it would be monitored. But he also said something a minister rarely says out loud: "It may not be possible to realise the benefits of the 10-year health plan if patients stop sharing their data."
A government can sign a contract without asking you. It cannot make you hand over your records.
And the numbers on the other side are contested too. Palantir says trusts using its technology recorded 110,000 additional operations, a 15% cut in discharge delays for long-stay patients and a 6.8% improvement in people finding out within 28 days whether they have cancer. NHS England has reported similar numbers but said it could not "draw conclusions about cause and effect". The government's statistics watchdog is investigating the data.
Anyone registered with a GP in England — which is to say, almost everyone. Younger patients especially: if you are in your twenties or thirties, your records are thin now, but they are the ones that will be used to plan the hospitals you'll actually need in 20 years, and the opt-out you set today keeps applying. It also matters to people who work in or near health research — nurses, medical students, anyone building health apps — because the pool of data they'll be allowed to study is being decided right now by people clicking a button on a government website. And it matters to anyone who has ever wondered what actually happens to their information once a public service hands it to a private contractor.
Two things to watch. First, whether the government pulls the break clause in Palantir's seven-year contract — Moran said ministers should switch provider and "not put this decision off until February", which is the only date anyone has named. Second, the next opt-out figures: 60,000 in two months is the baseline now. And the statistics watchdog's investigation into the performance numbers is still open; the source does not say when it reports.
Doctors and patients' groups are asking the government to drop the contract. But 60,000 people didn't wait for a campaign to succeed. They opted out — and in doing so quietly proved that the most powerful veto in a health system belongs to the patient, not the minister.
Sources: The Guardian, 7 September 2026 — «'Mistrust' of Palantir may affect NHS research, says health minister», by Robert Booth.
Впервые видно, что недоверие к одной компании стоит системе реальных данных: 60 тысяч человек за два месяца запретили использовать свои медкарты, и министр признал, что из-за этого может не сработать десятилетний план здравоохранения.
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