StarFish Medical merges with Kangaroo Group

StarFish Medical, Victoria BC-based full service medical device development firm, announced that it has merged with Kangaroo Group, a Toronto-based medical device industrial design and productization organization.

The resulting national entity will better serve medtech companies throughout North America with easier east coast access, increased resources and experienced medical device talent spanning the design, engineering, regulatory, and manufacturing process.

One organization with immediate benefits to existing clients

The merger results in a single organization under the StarFish Medical name with Scott Phillips as CEO, John Walmsley as COO, and Lahav Gil as vice-president Innovation. The company will operate design and manufacturing facilities in Victoria and Toronto, with a regional sales office in Twin Cities, Minnesota.

“With Kangaroo becoming our Toronto office in the east and StarFish in the west, we become a national entity that handily serves all of North America. Existing StarFish clients in the east will find it easy to visit us in Toronto,” explains Scott Phillips, StarFish Medical CEO and Founder.  “Kangaroo has a core strength in industrial design and StarFish has core strengths in physics, software, electronic design, optics, ultrasound and other core technologies.  I’m excited to see what we can do together.”

Lahav Gil, Kangaroo Group CEO and Founder notes, “Existing Kangaroo clients will experience much more robust service and offerings. On the product development side, they will be able to tap into a plethora of additional expertise and technical depth.  In manufacturing they’ll find an expanded supply chain, regulatory personnel and expertise.”

Combining entrepreneurial experience and medical device expertise

Phillips cites a less obvious benefit to entrepreneurial companies, “The merger of our two companies that are 14 and 17 years old respectively to create a new, national Canadian entity delivers significant value to emerging-technologies, start-ups, and small medical device companies. A big benefit of our combined experiences is the ‘movie in our mind’ of what is about to unfold in the commercialization process.  Clients think they are buying product design services, but what they’re really buying is people who’ve been part of this whole story before and can help guide them as to what it is supposed to feel like at different spots and whether it’s feeling right at that part of the journey.”