MedTech Masters Q&A: Sean Fenske

Wel­come to a new year and a new round of MedTech Mas­ters, fea­tur­ing some of the many peo­ple we admire in the medtech com­mu­ni­ty. Start­ing off our 2026 series incred­i­bly strong is Sean Fenske, edi­tor-in-chief of Med­ical Prod­uct Out­sourc­ing and Ortho­pe­dic Design & Tech­nol­o­gy! Some of our team mem­bers have had the priv­i­lege of work­ing with Sean for more than a decade now, on behalf of numer­ous clients and we’re always so impressed by his smart takes and thor­ough cov­er­age. We’re thrilled to share more about Sean’s impres­sive career and pas­sion for the indus­try. 

You have been covering the medtech industry for more than 25 years. Can you share a little bit about your career journey and how you got to where you are today? 

Out of col­lege, I got an assis­tant edi­tor posi­tion at a den­tal pub­lish­er on the spon­sored con­tent side of the com­pa­ny (the oth­er side pub­lished sev­er­al clin­i­cal den­tal jour­nals). This posi­tion rapid­ly exposed me to a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent aspects of pub­lish­ing, from copy­writ­ing to proof­read­ing to arti­cle solic­i­ta­tion. As a mem­ber of a small team, I was imme­di­ate­ly giv­en mul­ti­ple respon­si­bil­i­ties while also sup­port­ing the lead edi­tors, who were my super­vi­sors. After two years, how­ev­er, the den­tal indus­try was not hold­ing my inter­est (nor was the long com­mute).  

I then got a posi­tion as the edi­tor-in-chief of a med­ical device man­u­fac­tur­ing magazine—Medical Design Tech­nol­o­gy (MDT for those who still remem­ber). The prod­uct tabloid edi­tor posi­tion pre­sent­ed as a sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent role from my respon­si­bil­i­ties at the den­tal pub­lish­er. While the learn­ing curve for the med­ical device man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try was steep, the actu­al day-to-day was much eas­i­er than my pre­vi­ous role. I also began trav­el­ing to a few indus­try trade shows, which was a new expe­ri­ence.  

After sev­er­al years (and a brief stint as edi­tor-in-chief of anoth­er tabloid, Sur­gi­cal Prod­ucts, for which I was pro­vid­ed an assis­tant edi­tor), we tran­si­tioned the prod­uct tabloid to more of a hybrid pub­li­ca­tion. Prod­uct releas­es and gal­leries were still pre­sent­ed, but so too were con­tributed arti­cles, inter­views, and oth­er more tra­di­tion­al mag­a­zine offer­ings. Online was also becom­ing more of a focus and the web­site went from being updat­ed once a month with the mag­a­zine con­tent to reg­u­lar updates includ­ing news, prod­ucts, arti­cles, etc. Even­tu­al­ly, our print pub­li­ca­tion had reduced in fre­quen­cy, while online was grow­ing and two dai­ly newslet­ters were being pro­duced.  

In 2015, when the pre­vi­ous edi­tor of MPO and ODT left to pur­sue anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty, I was con­tact­ed to con­sid­er the posi­tion of edi­tor-in-chief of my cur­rent brands. I’ve enjoyed the change as event plan­ning became a part of my role with MPO/ODT and that’s been an excit­ing aspect I hadn’t pre­vi­ous­ly enjoyed.   

You are the editor-in-chief of not one, but TWO medical publications, and to quote your LinkedIn profile, you aim to “facilitate the exchange of information between suppliers, OEMs and consultants.” Why is this so important and how do you and MPO and ODT accomplish this? 

I’ll start with the how first. I learned ear­ly on that giv­ing peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute arti­cles would yield results for me and my brands. I’ve always been a big pro­po­nent of putting that offer out to mem­bers of indus­try. I don’t want self-pro­mo­tion­al adver­to­ri­als, but rather encour­age con­trib­u­tors to pro­vide edu­ca­tion­al/­ex­pe­ri­ence-based sub­mis­sions. Most peo­ple get it and pro­vide fan­tas­tic sub­mis­sions. It helps me always main­tain a wealth of qual­i­ty con­tent and it helps them to iden­ti­fy as thought lead­ers.  

It’s impor­tant because I don’t know what the real chal­lenges are, what a day-to-day sched­ule is like for man­u­fac­tur­ers, what keeps them up at night. I don’t know, that is, until they tell me. So, I val­ue the con­tri­bu­tions and input I get from all cor­ners of the indus­try. I’ve learned so much as a result and I con­tin­ue to do so with every new sub­mis­sion I get.  

You have described the health and medtech industry as constantly fascinating, and you have yet to get bored. What are some exciting new technologies and advancements you’re seeing in the space?  

Well, the easy answer at the moment is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The tech­nol­o­gy is per­me­at­ing so many aspects of the indus­try from enabling rapid iter­a­tion to reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sions to being used with­in the actu­al health­care tech­nol­o­gy itself. I don’t think it’s the cure-all that some seem to present it as, but it will cer­tain­ly become a won­der­ful tool that should pro­vide a wealth of ben­e­fits.  

Else­where, addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing is still inter­est­ing. It’s a mature tech­nol­o­gy now (or at least more so than it seems). The use of it in con­junc­tion with oth­er process­es in a hybrid approach, such as sur­face treat­ment and machin­ing, makes it even more use­ful and increas­es the scope for its appli­ca­tion.  

In the ODT realm, I still think bio­log­ics are quite inter­est­ing and present how ortho­pe­dics should head in the future. Lever­ag­ing nat­ur­al heal­ing to repair bone and mus­cle should be the ulti­mate goal in ortho­pe­dics, and get­ting there will take the con­tin­ued advance­ment of bio­log­ic tech­nolo­gies.   

What has been something memorable you’ve covered during your career? Or perhaps favorite article you’ve written? 

Well, on the lighter side, when I first start­ed, I wrote about the poten­tial impact of Y2K on med­ical device man­u­fac­tur­ing. As some­one who real­ly knew very lit­tle about this indus­try, I thought that was some­thing I could at least speak intel­li­gent­ly about. I was more famil­iar with com­put­ers at the time than I was with med­ical devices.  

As far as some­thing mem­o­rable, in 2024, I start­ed revis­it­ing my old columns from my start at MDT. While the brand (and com­pa­ny) has been gone for about sev­en or eight years, I saved every Editor’s Let­ter I ever wrote. I had a ball shar­ing them today and inputting my com­ments about what I wrote as I shared each col­umn. I only got through a hand­ful, but it’s some­thing I’ve been mean­ing to get back to doing. It’s billed as a “Throw­back Thurs­day” item on the MPO site. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to see what tech­nolo­gies cap­tured my atten­tion then and what’s hap­pened to them since—topics such as rapid pro­to­typ­ing, machine vision, wire­less medtech, and sin­gle-use repro­cess­ing. So hope­ful­ly, I’ll get to revis­it many mem­o­rable tech­nolo­gies through that vehi­cle and offer my insights on what’s hap­pened with it since.   

For medtech companies who want to pitch you with a story idea, what advice do you have for them? 

Know my audi­ence. MPO and ODT don’t go to doc­tors, nurs­es, sur­geons, or oth­er health­care pro­fes­sion­als. Sure, they may read an arti­cle or two online, but they aren’t the tar­get audi­ence. Sim­i­lar­ly, we don’t cov­er the phar­ma indus­try or the man­u­fac­ture of drugs. I know the term med­ical prod­ucts can be broad, but a quick vis­it to the site will reveal the indus­try we’re focused on.  

Oth­er­wise, there’s no real secret to it. Reach out (by email; I’m hor­ri­ble with the phone), ask for my guide­lines, pitch an idea, and then send it when ready. I like­ly won’t have a hard dead­line for you (unless you’re specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing a cer­tain print issue) as I’m always seek­ing con­tri­bu­tions. So, get it to me when it’s ready.  

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Thank you, Sean, for shar­ing your insights and expe­ri­ence with us. We (along with many oth­ers) love work­ing with you! Keep an eye out for our next MedTech Mas­ters com­ing soon, shin­ing a spot­light on Maayan Wen­derow, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at Etiom­e­try. 

You’re invit­ed to meet and learn from medtech mas­ters IRL dur­ing our inau­gur­al event called The Exchange: Where Cre­ativ­i­ty Meets Com­pli­ance in Medtech Mar­ket­ing. Join us on Tues­day, March 3, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at our Bell­mont Part­ners office. Hear insights and ideas from an all-star pan­el of experts dur­ing a can­did dis­cus­sion on how bring­ing cre­ativ­i­ty into medtech mar­ket­ing can dri­ve dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, demand, and growth in one of the most reg­u­lat­ed indus­tries, all with­out com­pro­mis­ing com­pli­ance, cred­i­bil­i­ty or clin­i­cal trust. For details and to reg­is­ter to join in-per­son or via livestream, vis­it our event page. 

Do you have a life-chang­ing inno­va­tion and are look­ing for help bring­ing it to mar­ket? We’d love to hear more! Con­tact us for a com­pli­men­ta­ry PR strat­e­gy ses­sion and brain­storm.