1st Speaker of the Month:

Pamela Z. Cacchione, PhD

Seminar Title: Social and Assistive Technologies in Care of Older Adults

Presentation Date: 7/14/2026

Presentation Time: 11:00 AM

Seminar Details: Dr. Cacchione will be presenting her research with different types of robots and technologies with older adults. She will share studies with different types of social assitive robots as well as robots to support activities of daily living and physical function. Additionally she will share her work with a digital pet therapy APP and Heart Failure Monitoring Socks that measure response to treatment as well as heart failure exacerbations.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Cacchione is the Ralston House Term Chair in Gerontological Nursing and Professor of Geropsychiatric Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner (GNP) who has practiced for over 30 years across the care continuum. She is a nurse leader, scientist and innovator. She has served as the President of the Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association, the Health Sciences Chair for the Gerontological Society of America and the Chair of the Aging Panel for the American Academy of Nursing. Her research investigates the use of social and rehabilitative robots for older adults. She is passionate about improving lives of older adults and persons with chronic illnesses, particularly heart failure. She has a Penn UP Start Company, AgingSense Where she focuses on developing technologies. She developed Heart Failure Monitoring Socks which are under the first phase of testing with persons with heart failure. Dr Cacchione received her BSN from Villanova University, MSN as a GNP from Marymount University and PhD from Saint Louis University. She completed postdoctoral training at the University of Iowa in intervention research. Dr. Cacchione is a Fellow in the Gerontological Society of American and the American Academy of Nursing.

Seminar Objectives:

• Recognize the importance of human-centered design when developing technologies to support older adults
• Learn the importance of setting up realistic expectations of what can be expected from different types of technologies
• Gain insights into how to engage older adults in research