The Toronto Rehabilitation Institute is now Canada's largest rehabilitation hospital. It's also grown in less than a decade to be the largest rehabilitation research group in the world. That is due to many of you around the room here supporting the Canada Foundation for Innovation, CIHR, and NSERC over the years, so we're really talking from a position of strength about how to go to more strength.
I have to resist talking to you about the things that we make, the things that we do, but they're things that will all affect you, if not now, then at some point in your lives. They're not the traditional areas of focus that you've heard about in the past. We're developing very practical solutions to common problems—the common problems of how you get your mom up in the morning, get her dressed, and toileted, and bathed, and around, and how you keep an eye on the family when you're at work or when you're out somewhere.
We've successfully launched three start-up companies within the last two years, and we expect to launch another two more start-ups within this next year. So we're speaking from a position of experience, and experience in start-ups primarily, in working with small and medium-sized enterprises.
I think you'll all agree that a major reason why there is no crisis in health care caused by the growing elderly population is actually that lengths of stay in hospital have been reduced through the development of improved medical devices and techniques that permit far less invasive procedures. You can go in and have a heart operation and come out the same day, or at least the next morning. Things are changing. That's what has allowed us to control health care expenditures. Yes, I know they're ramping up, but they haven't gone wild.
What we've really done, as you well know, is we've shifted the burden of health care onto the families. The families are now the largest health care labour force that we have. In Ontario, for example, over one-quarter of families have been providing continuous care for the last two years. Most people would prefer to live in their own homes. The government would prefer that, too, because it saves us taxpayer money. However, familial caregivers are caring for sicker and more disabled people, and they're under growing physical, mental, and financial stress. There are a lot of people under these stresses. There's a huge demand for technology that facilitates greater independence for seniors and helps informal caregivers complete their tasks with greater safety and ease.
One point that I want to make is that it's very important to recognize that not all sectors of the health technology industry are homogenous. You can't treat them all the same, particularly in terms of investment needs for entry. My colleague Andrew has talked about the need for a billion dollars sometimes, or hundreds of millions, to invest in drugs. Actually, new companies in the fields that we work in can often get started with $2 million, with a follow-on of another $3 million or $4 million or $5 million. They're actually below the radar screen of venture capital. Venture capital isn't interested in investment in small companies. Small business opportunities, however, might be more appropriate for Canada since they require much more modest investments, and because they're below the radar screen, they need other mechanisms of financing. We're going to have to be creative.
We also believe in not rushing to license off our technologies to multinationals. It's too easy, and actually the return on the investment isn't that great. You get 5% royalty flow or something. We're really trying to get start-ups going and build wealth first, even if we exit later. Build wealth, build jobs, build a culture of innovation in Canada that we can live on.
I've listed some recommendations and tried to be wise. I've avoided any, except perhaps the last one, that would cost the taxpayer anything.