Patrick Clifford is recently retired as the Director of Research and Innovation, at the Research Institute of Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket Ontario and CreateIT Now the Southlake owned and operated on campus health innovation center. During his tenure in that role, Patrick’s responsibilities included 1/oversight of research operations and infrastructure (including the REB) and 2/ advancing innovation and commercialization activities along with culture building, through strategic collaborations with industry, academia, funders, and other key partners. Patrick was also charged with leading the development and implementation of Southlake’s research agenda and advancing the innovation and commercialization strategy which included growing partnerships and collaborations with private sector ventures wishing to evaluate and/or validate wide ranging health focused technologies with Southlake clinicians in an acute care, large community hospital environment. Patrick led the CreateIT Now hospital-based innovation center which saw and assessed for collaborations some 350 early to mid stage ventures in the medical, digital, AI, and health related technologies, including their impact on health care delivery models and health economics.  Patrick oversaw the attraction and disbursement of some 12 million dollars in innovation funding and led a team focused on horizon scanning, hospital based HTA’s, HTA’s as enablers of innovation and innovative procurement mechanisms.  Patrick’s role at CreateIT now also focused on gaining early access to promising technologies and helping to drive real world data and validation exercises through collaborative initiatives with multiple stakeholders and the use of implementation science to help drive adoption and scale. Patrick was also engaged in Southlake’s health sector leadership role in innovative, value/outcome based, procurement practices using a range of innovative procurement strategies including competitive dialogue and design contests. Patrick retired after 34 years of health care experience in acute care, including a concurrent 22 years as a practicing clinician in emergency mental health at Oak Valley Health (formerly Markham Stouffville Hospital). Patrick continues to practice as a clinician, performs occasional work for Southlake post-retirement and serves on a variety of voluntary sector boards at the local, provincial and national level including a publicly funded long term care home, the Centre of Arthritis Excellence (CArE), HELIX through Seneca Polytechnic and the H2i (U of T), and maintains his role as a national director for N2. He holds a BA, BSW, BEd, MSW and his RSW designation.