Attendees at the HOME IV meeting.
HOME is an global initiative of patients, healthcare professionals, journal editors, regulatory authorities and the pharmaceutical industry.
Aim: To develop a consensus-based core outcome set (COS) for clinical trials and clinical practice. The core outcome set is the MINIMUM that should be measured in ALL clinical trials.
Foundation of HOME
Despite the high burden of atopic eczema, evidence-based clinical care and decision making is currently 
limited by the use of multiple, unvalidated outcome measures. A systematic review ( Charman et al. 2003), showed that only 27% of the 93 included trials used a published severity scale, with the remainder using modified versions of published scales or un-named scales with no data on validity or reliability. Another systematic review ( Schmitt et al. 2007) showed that most named outcome measurements for eczema have not been tested sufficiently and do not perform adequately in terms of validity, reliability or ease of use.
HOME was founded in 2008 by Professors Hywel Williams and Jochen Schmitt to bring together the eczema research community to standardise outcome measures by agreeing on a core outcome set to be included in all eczema clinical trials.
Organisational structure
Membership
The HOME initiative currently has over 300 members across the globe, with all stakeholder groups represented, including:
- Healthcare professionals
- Patients
- Parents/carers
- Regulatory bodies
- Journal editors
- Pharmaceutical industry
Working Groups
Some members also volunteer to be part of 'working groups' that carry out research needed to enable evidence-based consensus decisions to be made. These groups are:
Clinical signs
Patient reported symptoms
Long term control
Quality of life
Outcomes for routine clinical practice
Implementation:
- Stakeholder engagement
- Universal Applicability
- Ease of use
Executive Committee
- Eric Simpson,
USA (Joint Chair)
- Christian Apfelbacher,
Germany (Joint Chair)
- Jochen Schmitt,
Germany
- Hywel Williams,
UK
- Phyllis Spuls,
The Netherlands
- Kim Thomas,
UK
- Norito Katoh,
Japan
- Yael Leshem,
Israel
- Louise Gerbens,
The Netherlands
- Laura Howells,
UK
HOME co-ordination
HOME is co-ordinated by Mike Jacobson. The co-ordinating centre is hosted within the Centre of Evidence-based Dermatology, University of Nottingham, UK
To contact HOME email: HOME@nottingham.ac.uk