Your competitors are already inside the NHS's biggest data platform. Are you?

If you sell technology to the NHS, you have probably heard of the Federated Data Platform. You have probably also heard that it is controversial, that a select committee has recommended triggering the break clause in the Palantir contract, and that there are campaigns calling for it to be scrapped. You may have concluded that the sensible thing to do is wait and see what happens.

I want to explain why that conclusion, while understandable, may cost you the most significant market opportunity in NHS health technology in a decade.

What FDP actually is

FDP is an operational platform running inside 137 NHS Trusts. At its core is a shared data model that describes patients, clinicians, wards, encounters, medications, and actions in a consistent way across every Trust on the NHS. When a Trust builds or adopts a product on FDP, that product works at other Trusts without being rebuilt, because all of them share the same underlying structure.

That is the capability that changes the economics of selling into the NHS. Today, if you want to deploy your product across 20 Trusts, you do 20 separate procurement processes, 20 information governance reviews, and 20 integration projects against 20 different local configurations. FDP has created the foundations for a different model: build once, deploy everywhere. The vehicle for that is called the Solutions Exchange, a marketplace where approved products become available to every Trust on the platform.

The Trusts using FDP are already seeing results. Tens of thousands of additional operations. Hundreds of thousands of waiting list corrections. Measurable reductions in patients stuck in hospital longer than they need to be. Those outcomes came from a first generation of nationally built products covering discharge, waiting lists, theatre scheduling, and cancer pathways. The next generation will come from companies like yours, if you are ready.

Why waiting is riskier than it looks

The political uncertainty is real and I will not pretend otherwise. I discussed on BBC Radio 5 Live last week why I believe the select committee's recommendation to trigger a break clause that removes Palantir as the supplier of the core software behind FDP is flawed. But whether you agree with me or not, consider the commercial position.

137 Trusts are live. The platform is rated green by the Treasury. No credible alternative has been identified, built, or funded. The break clause decision is not until February 2027, and even if the contract were not renewed, any successor platform would need to support the same data standards because 137 Trusts have already built their operational workflows around them. No one disputes the need for the FDP, the concerns are all about the supplier. The data model is NHS-owned intellectual property. It does not disappear with a change of supplier.

I have spoken to health tech companies who told me they are holding off because of the headlines. I understand the caution. But while they wait, other companies are done with reading the newspaper headlines driven by anti Palantir activists and campaign groups. Their CTOs are inside the platform right now, exploring its architecture and its AI capabilities, working out how their products fit, and building. By the time the political noise settles, those companies will have a 12 to 18 month head start on their competitors, they will have their products available to buy in Solutions Exchange, the FDP shopfront. In a market where being first to an NHS-wide distribution channel is worth years of conventional sales effort, that gap may be unrecoverable.

What it looks like in practice

Picture a company that has built a product to help Trusts manage a specific clinical workflow; say, pre-operative assessment. Today, that company sells Trust by Trust. Each deployment takes months. Each new customer requires local integration, local IG sign-off, and a local commercial negotiation.

Now picture that same company with its product built to the FDP data model and listed on the Solutions Exchange. A Trust that needs better pre-operative assessment can adopt it through the platform, with the data integration already handled and the governance framework already in place. The company is not selling to one Trust at a time; it is available to 137. The clinical benefit scales. The commercial return scales with it.

That is the opportunity the companies working inside the platform right now are positioning for.

Where to start

Most of the health tech companies I talk to have heard about FDP but are left with many fundamental questions unanswered. They simply have not had anyone explain what the platform means for their specific product and their specific market position. The architecture is unfamiliar. The route onto the Solutions Exchange is not obvious. The relationship between the shared data model and their existing product design is unclear.

I run a free 20-minute briefing for health technology companies that want to understand the basics: what FDP is, how the Solutions Exchange works, and whether your product is a fit. It is a conversation, not a sales pitch, and it will give you enough to decide whether this is something your team should be looking at seriously.

For companies that are further along and want a structured assessment of their product strategy, commercial positioning, and route onto the platform, I run a one-day FDP Clarity Session that covers the architecture, the data model, and the specific steps for your organisation.

Start with the briefing. That is where every company I work with began, including the ones that are now building inside the platform.

Book a free 20-minute briefing | Learn more about the FDP Clarity Session