The self-estimated wellbeing of community-resident older people is poorly described despite being a major strategy in the health and welfare sector.

To create a comprehensive self-perceived wellness profile of older people and construct an electronic platform for evaluation wellbeing of home-dwelling older people.

Construction and evaluation of a novel wellbeing instrument among octogenarians participating in home visits during the years 2007–2009.

Department of Elderly care, Administration of Health and Social Welfare of City of Oulu, Finland and Primary Health Care Unit, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland.

A novel wellness profile showed acceptable internal consistency from 0.71–0.92 and good concordance between most self-estimated and externally evaluated in seven of the nine domains of the wellness profile of octogenarians.

Our novel wellness profile called OLDWELLACTIVE points out that older people's own voice is a reliable estimate of their wellbeing and a concordance was shown between self-expressed and evaluated rates in most variables of wellbeing. A self-estimated wellness assessment of older people can be used as an aid for evaluation of their wellbeing and as a “short battery of older people's wellbeing” for population based strategies in elderly care.