Scoring life insurance applicants' laboratory results, blood pressure and build to predict all-cause mortality risk.

OBJECTIVE

Evaluate the degree of medium to longer term mortality prediction possible from a scoring system covering all laboratory testing used for life insurance applicants, as well as blood pressure and build measurements.

METHOD

Using the results of testing for life insurance applicants who reported a Social Security number in conjunction with the Social Security Death Master File, the mortality associated with each test result was defined by age and sex. The individual mortality scores for each test were combined for each individual and a composite mortality risk score was developed. This score was then tested against the insurance applicant dataset to evaluate its ability to discriminate risk across age and sex.

RESULTS

The composite risk score was highly predictive of all-cause mortality risk in a linear manner from the best to worst quintile of scores in a nearly identical fashion for each sex and decade of age.

CONCLUSION

Laboratory studies, blood pressure and build from life insurance applicants can be used to create scoring that predicts all-cause mortality across age and sex. Such an approach may hold promise for preventative health screening as well.