A system for symptom assessment in advanced palliative home healthcare using digital pens

Symptom control is one of the most important components of delivering effective palliative care, and adequate symptom assessment is a prerequisite for good symptom control. Patients receiving treatment in palliative home healthcare is geographically separated from the caregivers making symptom control a challenge, a challenge that could be met by the use of information and communication technology. Technologies of today offer different ways for patients to assess their symptoms at home and send the assessments to the healthcare provider. Examples are the use of a PC, a touch-tone telephone, and a digital pen, which require different kinds of infrastructure in the patient's home, and which differ in strengths and weaknesses. As part of an ongoing quality assurance work within the hospital-based home care clinic at Linköping University Hospital, the project has designed, developed and implemented an IT-support system for pain assessments for patients at home using digital pen and mobile Internet technology. A questionnaire study indicated that pain assessment using digital pens was accepted by patients and that problems mainly arose from the use of the visual-analogue scale.