Dr Stafford has worked for 20 years in Ireland and the UK in academic, public and private sector in lifesciences research, commercialisation and business development. Between 2011 and 2016 lead a team managing spin-out HPSUs from state funded research, particularly focussed on health-tech and led the establishment of a number of large scale national public-private research & innovation Centres including the establishment of Health Innovation Hub Ireland in 2016. In June 2016, he joined the INFANT Maternal & Child Health Research Centre, hosted by UCC and based at Cork University Hospital and Cork University Maternity Hospital as Head of Business Development and became General Manager in 2018. INFANT is a clinical and health research Centre of over 100 staff, €50M funding portfolio with over 100 academic, clinical and industry partners in over 30 countries with major focus on clinical trials, health data and digital health research and innovation to improve outcomes in maternal and child health. In September 2021, Dr Stafford took up a new role as the digital health sector lead for Enterprise Ireland working with a large portfolio of digital health companies and developing sectoral initiatives in digital health.
