“Keeping the Lights On” (Community of Innovation Podcast, Episode 3)


Your innovation is exciting, world changing, elegantly designed – but can you pay the rent?

CABHI loves innovation, but the world doesn’t have enough closets for all the promising services and prototypes collecting dust because there wasn’t a plan to pay for them. Financial sustainability isn’t easy, but the good news is that there isn’t only one road to achieving it. Join us as we engage on this topic with our special guest, who has found herself in the unexpected role of bootstrapping a promising clinical service (and service model) from idea, to pilot, to program.

Dr. Joanne Ho is a geriatrician, clinical pharmacologist, and internist practicing at Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario. She is an Assistant Professor at McMaster University’s Divisions of Geriatric Medicine & Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology. She is also a Schlegel Clinical Research Scientist at Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging. Most germane to her appearance on our podcast, she is the creator of GeriMedRisk, an interdisciplinary telemedicine service available to clinicians who need geriatric clinical pharmacology and psychiatry consultations.

Joanne joins the CoI crew to discuss how she’s approached keeping GeriMedRisk’s lights on as they develop, evaluate, and grow their service.

  1. Welcome and Introductions: 0:00 -1:30
  2. What do we mean by financial stability?: 1:30 – 3.20
  3. Steps to financial stability: 3:20 – 5.20
  4. What is a business model?: 5.20 – 7:50
  5. GeriMedRisk: what it is and their journey to a business model: 7:50 – 14:00
  6. Thinking about costs (Hint: It’s more than the lights): 14:00 – 19:30
  7. Business models impact evaluation, implementation, ROI, etc.: 19:30 – 27.10
  8. Where to learn about business models: 27.10 – 31:15
  9. Recommended resources and shout-outs: 31:15 – 35:46

References and resources recommended for further reading:

From Spencer:

  1. Non-self serving: The MaRS Library – An extensive collection of articles, videos, workbooks, courses, and other content that makes up their “Entrepreneurs Toolkit”.
  2. Self-serving: Himself and Stacey –  Especially if you are a CABHI-funded project – reach out to them!

From Joanne:

  1. Non-self serving: Deprescribing Canada and OTN – A shout out to the organizations and people upon who’s work GeriMedRisk is building.
  2. Self-serving: GeriMedRisk – They made a nice video that explains the whole service. Watch and share!
Podcast Theme music: “Air Hockey Saloon” by Chris Zabriskie, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License