StarFish Medical helps medtech innovators throughout North America overcome challenging technology obstacles to create breakthrough products that improve health and save lives. Photo credit: Starfishmedical.com
VICTORIA – Full-service medical device development company Starfish Medical has acquired Omnica Corporation, a Southern California firm that designs and engineers medical devices.
StarFish Medical intends to retain the remaining team at Omnica Corporation, adding the expertise of employees at this 40-year-old company to its repertoire, and the company now has 250 full time staff serving the North American market through its offices in Victoria, Toronto and Irvine.
The acquisition also includes Omnica’s 25,000-square-foot facility in Irvine, CA, where the firm develops medical products like disposables, diagnostic products, hand-held instruments, monitoring equipment, point-of-care products, and surgical devices.
Scott Phillips
“Adding Omnica to the StarFish family brings us closer to our clients in California and makes us even better placed to lead North America in MedTech innovation,” says Scott Phillips, StarFish Medical CEO and Founder. “Omnica offers a team of experts in custom medical device development with a strong, local connection to their clients that rivals our own. Omnica’s prototyping capacity is unparalleled in the industry. I’m looking forward to joining forces to amplify the support we can offer to medical technology companies.
Omnica’s co-founder, Earl Robinson, has announced his retirement along with the acquisition.
“When Rex Bare and I started this company 40 years ago, no one had the vision of where technology might take us. Medical device design and development was, and is a fertile environment,” Robinson says. “Our biggest strength has always been our people — the experts our clients rely on for their design, engineering, and prototyping needs. Joining the StarFish team broadens our network of proven industry experts, and our clients get extraordinary access to meet their needs.”
This is StarFish Medical’s second acquisition in seven years, after buying Kangaroo Group in Toronto in 2017 to expand its footprint to the east coast.
StarFish Medical provides design, development, commercialization, and flexible manufacturing outsourcing services, partnering with companies to create and manufacture products for a full range of medical specialty areas including Digital Health, Cardiovascular, Neurology, Urology, Gastroenterology, Otology, Ophthalmology, and In-Vitro Diagnostics.
Services include QA support for setting up QMS for start-up companies with implementation at the client’s site and assisting with ISO 13485 certification audits.
Omnica Corporation is a privately held design, engineering, and medical product development firm that has been in operation since 1984. Their expertise is developing complex medical devices. Technical personnel at Omnica includes designers, mechanical engineers, electronic and software engineers, advanced R&D specialists, regulatory staff (for FDA documentation), machinists and model makers.
“We’ve been doing this for 25 years now and as we reflect back on what was the original spark and what is the thing that sustains us,” Phillips says. “Initially, it was how do you build a community of people that are very passionate about building things, creating things, and people that want to have an impact. And really, we’ve stayed true to that vision for the entire 25 years. People say it’s more true now than it’s ever been.
“So it forces us to hold very high standards,” he adds. “We have to have high standards to have our clients trust us. We have to provide useful, helpful, meaningful advice, because it’s very hard to be successful in the domain that our clients are practicing in.”
Business Examiner Staff
