Please allow us to introduce ourselves.
Welcome to the HOMR Initiative’s website! This site will be the home for all HOMR-related news, resources, and updates. We hope you’ll find everything you need to know about HOMR, how it works, and how it can help improve care for patients as they approach the end of life.
HOMR is a tool that can help healthcare providers better identify patients in hospital approaching the end of life. The tool can also help care teams engage with patients and caregivers to make informed decisions about palliative and end-of-life care.
HOMR — which stands for Hospital One-year Mortality Risk — is an algorithm that is integrated into the Electronic Medical Records systems (EMRs) of hospitals. Hospitals can use it to quickly identify patients who may have unmet palliative needs or could benefit from a palliative approach to care.
HOMR works by automatically scanning patient charts for specific data points and using them to measure mortality risk. If HOMR identifies someone with a high risk of dying in the next year, it flags the chart to the patient’s care team.
The goal is to help hospital care teams start conversations with patients and caregivers. If HOMR identifies a person with a high risk of death in the next year, the patient can factor this into decisions about their care.
Our resources page has downloadable links to all the research that has been done on HOMR.
Our team is helping hospitals integrate HOMR into their clinical workflows. Implementation will look different based on each hospital’s needs, resources, and patient population.
For all HOMR-related questions, we encourage you to consult our FAQs or contact us directly.
We look forward to working with you and your hospital team to implement HOMR!
The HOMR initiative is funded by Health Canada (Health Care Policy and Strategies Program), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Healthcare Excellence Canada, the Baycrest Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation, and the Canadian Frailty Network.
