Several tools are currently used to assess the health of older people and their risk of future health problems, but it is unclear which ones perform best. A new study published in BMC Medicine, compares seven widely used geriatric assessment tools. The results show that a relatively simple tool developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet – can be just as reliable as more advanced and comprehensive approaches.
As populations age, healthcare systems face growing challenges in identifying older adults at increased risk of declining health, care dependency, and other adverse outcomes. Although numerous assessment tools have been developed for this purpose, few studies have directly compared their ability to predict a broad range of health outcomes.
In the current study, researchers analysed data from 3,108 people aged 60 years and over who participated in the Swedish National study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen , SNAC-K . Participants were followed for up to six years.
The researchers compared seven different assessment tools commonly used in healthcare and research. They evaluated how well each tool predicted a broad range of outcomes, including formal care use, nursing home admission, hospitalisation, dementia, disability, injurious falls, quality of life, and death. The results showed that three tools – the Health Assessment Tool (HAT), Intrinsic Capacity (IC) and the Frailty Index – consistently performed best across outcomes.
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“Our results show that tools which capture physical function, such as walking speed, are particularly important for predicting future health,” says lead author Ahmad Abbadi, a PhD student at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and affiliated with the Aging Research Centre at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet.
The simpler tool, HAT, combines a small number of measures that are relatively easy to collect in clinical practice, including an individual’s ability to manage everyday activities, cognitive function, walking speed, and number of chronic conditions.
Foto: Maria Yohuang
“Our findings suggest that relatively simple tools that capture multiple dimensions of health can effectively identify older people at increased risk of future health decline and support clinical decision-making,” says Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga , the study’s senior author and senior researcher at the Aging Research Centre , and director of the TraCeDem research centre at Karolinska Institutet.
The study also found that several widely used tools, which are often endorsed by guidelines, performed less well for certain outcomes compared to HAT, IC, and the Frailty Index.
The researchers note that the findings should be interpreted with some caution. Participants in the study were, on average, healthier and more highly educated than the general older population, which may influence how well the results generalise to other settings.
See the scientific article for information on funding and potential conflicts of interest.
Publication
“Comparing geriatric assessment tools for predicting health outcomes in older adults Authors”, Ahmad Abbadi, Francesco Innocenti, Giorgi Beridze, Emmanouil Kokoroskos, Alberto Zucchelli, Tobias Nordström, Caroline Wachtler, Laura Fratiglioni, Davide L Vetrano, Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga, BMC Medicine, online xx 2026, doi: xx
