Call for overhaul of mortality projection models

The study by Swiss Re - A window into the future: Understanding and predicting longevity - suggested current models made insufficient use of available information and could not be easily adapted to reflect medical progress. It said the key was to use commercial data such as that on the General Practice Research Database to build a picture of how combinations of diseases have affected overall mortality. It suggested combining this historical information with forward-looking models, considering treatments in trial, to give a series of different events which could be used to describe the...