The health service is rolling out an injectable form of immunotherapy, nivolumab, which means patients can receive their fortnightly or monthly treatment in five minutes instead of up to an hour via an IV drip.

The roll-out will save over a year's worth of treatment time for patients and NHS teams annually – enabling patients to spend less time in hospital while freeing up staff capacity to deliver more appointments and treatments.

The new jab can be used to treat 15 cancer types, including skin cancer, bladder, and oesophagus, and it is estimated around 1,200 patients in England per month could benefit.

In clinical trials, patients were 'highly satisfied' with the under-the-skin injection, which takes 3-5 minutes to administer, and preferred it to the IV form of the drug which takes 30 to 60 minutes every two weeks or four weeks, depending on the cancer type.

Around two in five patients who currently receive IV nivolumab, which is one of the most widely-used cancer treatments, should be eligible for the new jab.

NHS staff administering the jab could save around 1,000 hours of treatment time for patients and clinicians every month – the equivalent of more than one full year of time annually.

NHS cancer services are now be preparing to treat the first patients with the new treatment next month when supplies of the product are received in the UK.

Professor Peter Johnson, NHS England national clinical director for cancer, said: ‘This treatment is used for 15 different types of the disease, so it will free up thousands of valuable clinicians' time every year, allowing teams to treat even more patients and helping hospital capacity.

‘And this is just the latest development in the NHS's ongoing commitment to provide patients with the latest cancer therapies and treatment options that truly transform lives.'

The faster treatment comes at no extra cost to the NHS thanks to an agreement negotiated by NHS England with the manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb.