Pamela Cacchione, PhD, Named a 2018-2019 Penn Nursing Innovation Fellow

The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing’s Pamela Cacchione, PhD, the Ralston House Endowed Term Chair in Gerontological Nursing and a Nurse Scientist at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center (PPMC), has been appointed a 2018-2019 Penn Nursing Innovation Fellow.  As an innovation fellow in the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation, Cacchione will engage in multidisciplinary collaborations using innovation and design thinking to enhance health care delivery and outcomes.  

Cacchione is not new to applying innovation to provide health care solutions, particularly within aging populations.  She has collaborated with investigators from the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) on a National Science Foundation-funded grant to develop affordable mobile robots to help with elderly care. Additionally, she and a team of engineering design students have developed a prototype of heart failure monitoring Smart Socks. 

The Fellowship represents an important collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing), Penn Medicine’s Center for Health Care Innovation (CHCI), and the Department of Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS). It was formally launched in January 2017 to foster multidisciplinary collaboration by enabling fellows to work directly with designers, developers and innovation specialists from the CHCI over the course of a semester. The Penn Nurse Innovation Fellows learn disciplined techniques for testing potentially value-producing ideas faster, less expensively and more reliably. These skills will enable them to drive change in health care within Penn Medicine and at the local, state and national levels.