82: HealthTech Hour with Steve Roest - Episode 8282: HealthTech Hour with Steve Roest - Episode 82
UK Health Radio Podcast
Steve Roost talks with former NHS England innovation lead Matt Whitty about NHS data, private sector partnerships, synthetic data and the politics around the Federated Data Platform. The conversation focuses on trust, privacy and how better use of health data could improve care while still protecting patients.
52:08•11 Aug 2026
Who Owns Your Health Data? NHS Innovation, Trust and Synthetic Records
Episode Overview
- The NHS cannot realistically build all its own technology and needs clear, trusted partnerships with industry and academia.
- Public concern about ‘privatisation’ of the NHS is often rooted in distrust around motives and who benefits from health data.
- Most people assume there is already a single patient record, but GP and hospital systems are often separate and poorly joined.
- Synthetic data lets hospitals and researchers work with realistic datasets while reducing the risk of patients being re-identified.
- Grant funding and innovation schemes are strong in UK health, but the real challenge is turning successful pilots into business-as-usual services.
“Each patient journey should be an opportunity to improve care for the next patients.”
What insights can experts and survivors share about addiction? While this chat isn’t directly about alcohol recovery, it digs into something that matters to anyone who uses the health system: who controls your data, how it’s used, and whether you can trust the people handling it. HealthTech Hour host Steve Roost sits down with former NHS England Director of Innovation, Research and Life Sciences, Matt Whitty, now Director of Commercial Partnerships at MDClone.
Matt starts with his unusual journey from hospital pharmacist to national innovation lead, describing himself as “quite a curious person” who takes “calculated risks” rather than following a rigid career plan. From there, the conversation gets into the tension between a publicly funded NHS and private companies.
Matt argues that the NHS simply can’t build everything itself – from medicines to cloud infrastructure – and that good collaboration depends on trust, clear motives and making sure benefits flow back into the system, not just to “some sort of slightly mysterious nebulous group of people”. For anyone worried about their records being misused, the section on patient data is especially relevant.
Matt talks about who actually holds your records, why there’s still no single patient record, and why people are shocked to learn that GPs and hospitals often don’t share information smoothly. He explains how MDClone lets hospitals create synthetic (fake but realistic) patient data so clinicians and researchers can work more safely without risking re-identification. Steve presses Matt on the controversial Federated Data Platform (FTP) and Palantir, raising public concerns about politics, sovereignty and profit.
Matt accepts the complexity but keeps returning to the key question: does the tech actually help patients and staff? The episode finishes on a surprisingly upbeat note – from grant funding and innovation schemes to the UK’s potential to be a global leader in health data and research. If you care about how your health – or recovery – data is used, this conversation might get you thinking about what feels safe, fair and worth supporting.
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