Senior health officials say the number of people waiting for treatment could reach 10 million by Christmas.
"About 12% of patients on waiting lists don't need that appointment and they can be seen somewhere else," he told Sky News.
The questionnaires are developed with clinicians, who review the responses before deciding whether a further appointment is needed. "We can look at that information in a fairly quick way rather than sieving through the raw questionnaire data," says Dr Ananth Sivanandan, a consultant in clinical oncology at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, which has conducted a year-long trial with the technology.
Yet researchers cautioned that digital tools such as this could exacerbate health inequalities, because some groups have greater access to digital technology and are more fully reflected in the data.
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