Two Swedish researchers have developed an online tool to predict the likelihood someone will die within the next five years.

The website Ubble uses the findings of scientific research carried out by Andrea Ganna and Erik Ingelsson to assess survey respondents against its risk calculator.

The respondents are asked a series of questions based on different variables that were found to be "predictors of death" in the pair's study and a percentage chance they will die within the next five years is calculated.

The calculator also generates an "Ubble age" for respondents.

The risk calculator uses the site's association explorer, which maps how different measurements such as demographics, health and lifestyle variables were historically associated with death, to reach an answer.

Here's how Ubble explains the research behind the association explorer:

In this study, UK Biobank participants were monitored until February 2014. For those who had died, information from the Health and Social Care Information Centre and NHS Central Register was used to determine the cause of death. The researchers used this information and the 655 UK Biobank measurements to see how closely each was associated with death within five years.

Mr Ganna told ABC News 24, the Biobank collects information from 500,000 individuals.

"This is a [program of] voluntary participants who decided to be part of the study. They got a lot of information collected from the participant. We have questions and physical examination like blood pressure, body mass index and a blood assay," he said.

"What we did is we took all these measures and tried to study how each of these measurements was predicative of five-year mortality and this is clearly kind of a new approach.

"What we did then was to combine the predictor of mortality together in a score which is able to give you your mortality rates and what we call your Ubble age."

The Ubble Association Explorer plots how accurately different measurements predict death within five years. ( ubble.co.uk )

Tool accurate, good motivation to change behaviour

Mr Ganna said in testing against historical data, the tool was 80 per cent accurate and was a good way for people to better understand their health.

"I think it can be a way for people to know their risk and to improve the self-awareness about their behaviours," he said.

"So we say that if you have an Ubble age which is higher than your true age, then that means your risk is higher than an average person in the population with the same gender.

"So if you have an Ubble age which is lower than your true age, probably you have a lower risk."

In the initial study, the researchers found the variables that most accurately predicted death from all causes "did not need to be measured by physical examination" but were instead "self-reported" factors such as someone's walking pace.

Ubble's website said: "Overall, walking pace was a stronger predictor [of death] than smoking habits and other lifestyle measurements. In fact, men aged 40-52 who reported their usual walking pace as 'slow' had a 3.7 times increased risk of death within five years than those who answered 'steady average pace'".

Mr Ganna was quick to point out speeding up your walking pace would not extend your life, but that the finding was "just a correlation".

"One of the other questions is the number of cars that you own," he said of the Ubble questionnaire.

"That's a typical tag for a social economic status, the more cars you own, probably the more wealthy you are and lower is your risk of dying.

"It doesn't mean if you go out and buy another car, your risk will decrease. So these are just correlations - a good predictor.

"To decrease your risk you stick with the traditional advice; stop to smoke, eat healthy and do physical exercise."

This is an example Ubble result. As well as several other lifestyle questions, the respondent of this questionnaire input that she was a 41-year-old female non-smoker with two children.