Objective: The purpose of this study was to conduct a statistical mapping between patient reported disease-specific quality of life in atopic dermatitis (AD) and a generic quality of life measure and from this use optimised algorithms to estimate health utility. Methods: Multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate response probabilities to the SF-12 health survey from responses to the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) in patients enrolled into a clinical trial studying the long-term use of tacrolimus ointment. A random sample of 70% of patient responses was used for the regression analysis, with the remaining 30% used to test the predictive ability of the response mapping. Predicted and actual SF-12 responses were converted to SF-6D and EQ-5D health utilities using published algorithms (Brazier 2004 and Gray 2006) by Monte Carlo simulation. Results: Evaluable data were available for 255 patients, 40% of whom were male, and for which the median age at screening was 28 years (IQR 22 to 38). The percentage of variance in item response attributable to predictor variable change ranged 15.6% (SFCALM) to 33.3% (SFLESS). The mean predicted utility in the test dataset was 0.797 (sd 0.092) by the SF-6D method and 0.787 (0.210) by EQ-5D. The mean squared error (MSE) between the actual and predicted utilities were 0.013 for SF-6D and 0.068 for EQ-5D. Predicted SF-6D utility was within 10% of the actual utility in 62.7% of cases while for predicted EQ-5D utility this fell to 39.8%. Conclusion: Response mapping of disease-specific quality of life in AD to generic quality of life SF-12 produced more reliable estimates of SF-6D utility than EQ-5D utility, and correlated closely with similar estimates made from a standard assessment of disease severity in eczema.