Older Adults’ Experience of Health and Life Events as Reported Online Over 150 Consecutive Weeks

Key activities and life events that impact quality of life and health may be gleaned from cross-sectional annual surveys or for medical data, derived intermittently from electronic health records. These methods cannot reflect the day-to-day and week-to-week changes that typically occur in domestic life. To assess the frequency and types of major life activities and events occurring at finer-grained temporal scale, we queried online, every week, three domains of activity and function (life events such as having an overnight visitor, travel away from home; health-related events such as medication changes, falls, ER/hospital visits, health limitations; and internal states such as pain, mood, or loneliness). Over a mean assessment period of 2.9 ± 1.2 years, 16,738 online surveys were completed by 129 community-residing volunteers with mean age 84 years. Overall the most frequent events reported were physical health limitations (14%), travel away from home (12%) and overnight visitors (9%). Needing new in-home assistance for medication management, bathing, dressing or grooming was rare (1%). Accidents were also rare (1%). Low mood, pain ratings (0-10 scale) and loneliness were infrequently reported; 4% low mood, 8% pain rated > 5, 3% reporting loneliness. Low mood and increased pain intensity were highly correlated with health changes (medication changes, ER/hospital visits, health limitations, falls; all p<0.0001). Continuous home-based online assessment of life activities and health can provide a more detailed and timely characterization of older adult function. These data may be used to guide more timely and effective health maintenance programs and interventions.