O& P Clinical Innovations, Pennsylvania, received $50,000 from the Mercer County Innovation Fund, which the company will use to hire a part-time business development manager and a part-time laboratory technician, and help pay for marketing and website development. Sara Peterson, PhD, CPO, FAAOP(D), started O& P Clinical Innovations as a consultant in 2019 and expanded into prosthetics fabrication in 2025.
The company employs Peterson and a part-time person, but she projects that number to increase to eight within three years.
“It’s important to know that these funds specifically aren’t used for the hard assets,” Rod Wilt, executive director, Penn-Northwest, told The Business Journal. Penn-Northwest is a partner in the Mercer County Innovation Fund. “These are used to protect intellectual property. These funds are used to advance ideas, maybe buy additional software–what we call those soft assets that you need, that are just as important as the tool and just as important to the building and the machine and equipment.”
