Good symptom control in palliative end-of-life home care requires adequateaccess to patients’ symptom assessments. The aim of the study was to investigatethe feasibility of an electronic symptom assessment reporting system tosupport symptom control. A randomised controlled study was performedduring April 2008–December 2009. The intervention consisted of a networkeddigital-pen-based information system. The primary outcome measure chosenwas the time span from the patient’s reporting of a symptom to the careproviders’ noticing this assessment. Patients with at least moderately severesymptoms were invited to participate in the study. Eighteen (11 intervention,seven control) patients from four home care centres participated, submittinga total of 330 symptom assessments. There was a significantly shorter mediantime span from reporting to noticing for assessments in the intervention group.The system used allowed both frequent and regular symptom reporting frompatients that can contribute to more correct and prompt medical decisions inpalliative end-of-life home care. Trial registration number: ISRCTN09750271.Health Systems (2013) 2, 171–180. doi:10.1057/hs.2013.4;published online 17 May 2013; corrected online 4 June 2013