8-80 Incubator Program

The 8-80 Incubator Program is designed to streamline health innovations that will improve the lives of Canadians of any age. 8-80 gets to the middle by focusing on the edges of 8 months to 80 years. It is a joint endeavour between CHEO and Bruyère whose goal is to partner businesses with researchers and create a rich ecosystem for early-stage innovation emerging from Eastern Ontario’s health professionals.

The 8-80 Incubator Program aims to capture the passion and creativity within CHEO and Bruyère, and foster an environment designed for and by health-care professionals. We will support technology validation, provide business coaches, research mentors and system navigators to help transform inspiration into high-impact products and services for our patients and families.

Our vision

The vision of the 8-80 Incubator is a transformed innovation process within CHEO and Bruyère, leading Canada in both internally developed health innovation, and directly supporting the validation and adoption of externally developed health tech solutions.

Cartoon telescope

Our program objectives

Plant growing

The primary objective of this initiative is to create a fertile, aligned ecosystem in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario for health innovation. CHEO and Bruyère will partner together, to target the full spectrum of Canadians, from the very young (CHEO) to older adults (Bruyère).

Learn more about our objectives

The primary objective of this initiative is to create a fertile, aligned ecosystem in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario for health innovation. CHEO and Bruyere will partner together, to target the full spectrum of Canadians, from the very young (CHEO) to older adults (Bruyère).

The 8-80 Incubator has been structured with three interrelated areas of focus:

The Foundational Change focus, with the core objective of fostering an institutional culture within CHEO and Bruyère that embraces and supports innovation.
The Internal Innovation focus, with the core objectives of:
- incubating the development, piloting and commercialization of innovation being developed within CHEO and Bruyère
- building the capacity of innovators within these institutions to engage effectively and succeed in the entrepreneurial world.
The External Innovation focus, with the twin objectives of:
- matchmaking externally developed innovative solutions with identified internal challenges, and
- transforming CHEO and Bruyère into preferred partners for co-development and health innovative piloting by Canadian companies focused on health innovation

CHEO and Bruyère Innovation Team members

Meet the CHEO and Bruyere Innovation Team

Matthew Bromwich, CHEO
Jim Bottomley, CHEO
Jason Berman, CHEO
Mari Teitelbaum, CHEO
Mitch Kutney, Bruyère
Heidi Sveistrup, Bruyère
Anna McCormick, CHEO

Dayre McNally, CHEO
Lillian Lai, CHEO
Berard Thebaud, CHEO
Erika Bariciak, CHEO
Megan Radmore, CHEO
Chris St. Germain, CHEO
Christina Honeywell, CHEO
Mike Walker, CHEO
Kevin Cheung, CHEO
Sasha Carsen, CHEO
Khaled El-Eman, CHEO
Melise Keays, CHEO
Watson Gale, CHEO
Kevin Smit, CHEO
Parm Gill, CHEO
Heidi Elmoazzen, CHEO

Our program activities

The 8-80 Incubator is being structured around three areas of focus: Foundational Change, Internal Innovation, and External Innovation. The core activities for each area are:

Foundational Change

This area of focus is the foundation of the 8-80 Incubator initiative, with the objective of fostering an institutional culture that embraces and supports innovation. Core activities involve:

Development of an Innovation Roadmap, specifically designed to develop the nascent potential within the health care setting to support the development and adoption of commercial innovation. This Innovation Roadmap clearly articulates a path forward for CHEO and Bruyère to significantly improve their capacity to support innovation. This activity includes initial research on current institutional barriers to innovation within CHEO and Bruyère, the development of the Roadmap document, and direct engagement with institutional leadership to realize this roadmap.

The Canadian Healthcare Innovation Charter will capture the best practises and lessons learned from the Innovation Roadmap process, to be disseminated nationally to innovative health care research institutions.

Navigator Service – The 8-80 Incubator becomes the formal liaison between innovators (internal and external), institutional decision makers and ecosystem resources.

The Eat Our Own Cooking program – A formal program whereby CHEO and Bruyère commit to becoming the first paying customer for relevant innovation that is successfully piloted at their respective institutions.

External Innovation

This area of focus transforms the two participating hospitals into partners of choice for external developers of health innovation (companies with a promising minimum viable product), while matchmaking emerging market solutions with identified internal challenges. Core activities involve:

Health Innovation – The 8-80 Initiative creates the Eastern Ontario Pediatric / Geriatric Office of Health Innovation, as the single point of contact / system navigator for external industry innovators who wish to partner with CHEO and Bruyère for the development, piloting and validation of relevant health innovation, and for risk capital looking to invest in the 8-80 healthcare space.

Industry Liaison – Develop internal receptor capacity within CHEO and Bruyère’s health professionals, nurturing the skills necessary to successfully partner with external industry innovators looking to rapidly develop, pilot and validate relevant health innovation.

Industry Partnerships – Develop and continually cultivate a broad spectrum of relevant industry contacts and stakeholders, focused on:

External innovators that wish to partner with CHEO and/or Bruyère for the purposes of innovation development, piloting and validation.

External industry, risk capital, and funding organizations that can support internal innovators at CHEO and Bruyère.

Ecosystem Development – Support existing healthcare-focused innovation events, such as the Health Hackathon, while initiating a new event focused on the regional health innovation ecosystem in partnership with Children’s Healthcare Canada.

Demo Day – An annual event where participating innovators have the opportunity to pitch their innovation to healthcare leaders, investors, press, and other community members

Internal Innovation

This area of focus works directly with health professional innovators, incubating the development and piloting of innovation being developed within CHEO and Bruyère. Core activities involve:

Innov8 with 8-80 is the flagship incubator program, providing comprehensive support and coaching for CHEO and Bruyère innovators. Support provided to health professional innovators through the “Innovate with 8-80” program includes seed funding (up to $40K in conditionally repayable loans), business planning and strategy development, mentorship, matchmaking/team building/networking, support in establishing research and collaboration agreements with external parties, ecosystem navigator services supporting innovators who need to engage at the institutional level for piloting and validation of innovation, and support with identifying and securing funding. This program will include a curated collection of resources for healthcare innovators in Eastern Ontario.

Please note that each partnership formed between the 8-80 Incubator and participating innovators will be highly tailored to the unique needs of both the hospitals and that particular innovator.

The Sprint with 8-80 program involves a quick, intense engagement with a CHEO/Bruyère innovator in the early stages of innovation development, focused on opportunity identification/definition, strategic road mapping, and initial networking. Seed funding of $5K will be granted to 8 participants of the Sprint with 8-80 program per year, in the form of a grant.

The Hardest Part of Your Day initiative – a program inviting all CHEO and Bruyère employees to report pain points (inefficiencies, challenges, problems, and obstacles) that they believe can be addressed through innovation. Results are mapped against both internal and external innovators, with active matchmaking for identified high priority opportunities. There is the option for this program to be repeated semi-annually.

Partner Services – the 8-80 team will collaborate with strategic partners to deliver educational opportunities along with traditional accelerator and tech transfer services to health care innovators, leveraging established programs offered by the University of Ottawa, Invest Ottawa and others.

Underlying all three areas of focus is a commitment to knowledge dissemination and national leadership. In developing and executing on the 8-80 Incubator initiative, the proponent team will actively engage with leading health-focused innovation programs across Canada, and will in turn widely disseminate lessons learned from the 8-80 Incubator model and the Innovation Roadmap process being undertaken.

Funding

CHEO and Bruyère are submitting a proposal to FedDev for a 5 years funding envelope to support the activities described here. While we wait to secure funding, CHEO and Bruyère will continue to work towards the development of a stable innovation program and will actively support the heath innovation community partnerships both locally and nationally.

Contact Us

If you have an innovative idea, or questions about the 8-80 Incubator Program, please contact us! We’re always looking to learn about and collaborate on new ideas to drive forward health care innovation.

We can be reached at innovation@cheo.on.ca and will respond to your message within 24 hours.