Oleg Zaslavsky

I’m Oleg Zaslavsky, a professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing and Director of the Digital Health Innovation Hub. My work focuses on a question I find especially important: how can we use technology in ways that genuinely improve people’s lives as they grow older?

I work at the intersection of aging, digital health, and artificial intelligence. Together with colleagues and community partners, my team develops and tests digital tools designed to support older adults, family caregivers, and health professionals. Our projects range from online behavioral interventions for people caring for loved ones with dementia to new approaches that use AI, sound, and digital sensing to recognize health problems earlier in long-term care and community settings. What matters most to me is that technology works for the people it is intended to serve. That means designing tools that are practical, accessible, easy to use, and grounded in strong scientific evidence. It also means involving older adults, caregivers, and care providers throughout the research process rather than simply designing technology for them.

My research is supported by federal agencies, foundations, and industry partners and brings together people from nursing, medicine, engineering, computer science, and behavioral science. I enjoy creating these interdisciplinary teams because some of the most interesting solutions emerge when people with very different expertise work on the same problem. Ultimately, my goal is not to develop technology for its own sake. It is to help older adults live healthier, more independent, and more fulfilling lives, while giving families and care teams better tools to support them.