Fresh Acquires Product Creation Studio’s Assets to Accelerate Healthcare Innovation

Healthcare innovation rarely comes from a single breakthrough.

Take the automated insulin pump: a glucose biosensor running on a predictive edge device, or robotic-assisted surgery, which pairs precision mechanics with real-time computer vision and automation. Or, AI-assisted diagnostic imaging, which showcases better hardware and trained models running on secure, intelligent infrastructure to flag disease before symptoms appear.

There’s a common thread between these examples—each illustrates that while medtech development and digital product development used to live in separate worlds, the gap is closing. The medtech and biotech companies pushing the industry forward today aren’t just building better devices, but combining regulatory rigor, physical engineering, software velocity, and AI integration to create intelligent products and connected systems.

Recognizing the importance of building teams that can move fluidly between disciplines, Fresh recently acquired the assets of Product Creation Studio—a strategic move to elevate our capacity to serve clients with comprehensive medtech and biotech innovation solutions.

Product Creation Studio: Strong roots in healthcare innovation

With its 27 years of engineering credibility, Product Creation Studio has served as the development engine behind some of the medical device industry’s most recognizable innovations, from 3D ultrasound to vaccine delivery, light therapy, and much more.

Product Creation Studio’s work has also earned Medical Design Excellence and International Design Excellence awards, along with a “Most Innovative Company” recognition at MD&M West, North America’s largest medical device R&D and manufacturing event.

Meanwhile, Fresh has built its reputation around AI, computer vision, and hardware innovation, built on two decades of delivering digital solutions. We view the Product Creation Studio acquisition as a way to extend and accelerate our capacity to contribute to the full arc of healthcare innovation.

From early-stage product strategy through regulated engineering, verification and validation, and go-to-market commercialization, we’re positioned to deliver expertise wherever clients need it.

Jeff Dance, our CEO, said it best. 

“This is a powerful combination of complementary strengths [ . . .] Together, we can help clients move faster, innovate more boldly, and bring transformative, smarter products to market with greater confidence.”

A promising healthcare innovation track record

It’s worth showcasing the portfolio that got Product Creation Studio here, because it’s a useful snapshot of what healthcare innovation examples actually look like in practice—not abstract “innovation,” but shipped products solving specific clinical problems.

LumiThera LT-300

Product Creation Studio worked directly with LumiThera’s near-infrared light scientists to engineer the LT-300, a light therapy device for a degenerative eye condition. The partnership helped move the device into human trials, where an early pilot study reported measurable vision improvement in patients with dry age-related macular degeneration.

Orlance MACH-1

Orlance set out to build a needle-free, epidermal vaccine delivery platform using gene gun technology to deliver DNA vaccines directly into skin cells. Product Creation Studio built custom test instrumentation to quantify the device’s performance, then optimized its internal flow path to significantly increase effective dose delivery, giving Orlance the data and tooling to advance its research and secure additional funding.

Advanced Bionics Neptune

Before Neptune’s waterproof cochlear implant processor, cochlear implant users had to remove their $15,000+ processors around water, cutting them off from pools, showers, and rain. Product Creation Studio engineered Neptune’s IP68-rated housing and wearing system into the first fully submersible cochlear implant processor.

Verathon BladderScan BVI 9400

Verathon’s original BVI 3000 had become the standard of care for portable bladder ultrasound imaging, but its aging design couldn’t support new scanning use cases. Product Creation Studio collaborated with Verathon to redesign the platform as the BVI 9400—a 3D ultrasound tool that became a category standard—adding an adjustable screen, a streamlined GUI, and a legacy-compatible interface that shortened the learning curve for existing users.

Add these examples to what Fresh has already done in the medical space—high-volume automated testing, product life testers, ventilator prototypes, and more—and a picture begins to form of how our complementary strengths will enable us to support a diverse range of clients building the next wave of healthcare innovation solutions.

Healthcare innovation solutions, designed for what’s next

We plan to expand offerings across several areas central to where healthcare innovation is heading, including:

• Physical AI and intelligent automation
• Smart medical devices and connected health products
• AI-enabled diagnostics and clinical decision support
• Computer vision applications in healthcare
• Digital therapeutics and connected health experiences
• Lab automation and biotech instrumentation
• Software platforms built for regulated industries
• Automated verification and test engineering

Blake Stancik, formerly VP of Operations at Product Creation Studio and now leading the integration, framed the move as a response to where the industry is going: 

“Medical and biotech companies increasingly need partners who understand the intersection of regulated product development, digital data development, and new intelligent technologies like generative AI and computer vision [ . . .] By bringing these teams together, we’re creating a uniquely capable organization that can help clients solve hard technical challenges with speed and rigor.”

For medtech and biotech companies evaluating development partners, the question is shifting from “can you build the device?” to “can you build the device and the intelligent systems around it?”

We’re excited to help clients not only answer that question, but extend the notion of what’s possible in an industry that has the potential to not only genuinely improve—and in some cases save—the lives of patients.

If you’re interested in how our expanded capabilities could support your next medical device or digital health product, we’d love to discuss your project.