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
Professor Peter Johnson, NHS England National Clinical Director for Cancer said: “Immunotherapy has already been a huge step forward for many NHS patients with cancer, and being able to offer it as an injection in minutes means we can make the process far more convenient.
“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 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.
This follows approval from the UK’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) today.
In clinical trials, patients were highly satisfied with the under-the-skin injection, which takes three to five 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.
Most eligible new patients are also expected to begin on the injectable form of nivolumab.
NHS cancer services will now be preparing to treat the first patients with the new treatment next month when supplies of the product are received in the UK, helping to free up valuable resources in nursing and pharmacy teams, as well as helping with capacity demands in cancer day units, where the drug is currently administered.
This is the latest in a series of NHS cancer treatment innovations introduced to save patients time and improve access, including the rollout of new injections for breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and blood disorders.
