MedTech Masters Q&A: Chris Newmarker

Next up in our MedTech Mas­ters Q&A series is Edi­tor in Chief, Life Sci­ences for Mass­De­vice and Med­ical Design & Out­sourc­ing, Chris New­mark­er! A tal­ent­ed jour­nal­ist, we’ve long-admired Chris’ work and in fact, he actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el event we host­ed a num­ber of years ago with health and medtech media mem­bers! We’re very grate­ful that Chris took the time to par­tic­i­pate in this series and share his insights and exper­tise. 

You have been cov­er­ing the medtech indus­try for quite some time. Can you share a lit­tle bit about your career jour­ney and how you got to where you are today? 

I’m an Ohio native who moved to the Twin Cities about 17 years ago to take a job as a local busi­ness reporter. Along with Boston and Cal­i­for­nia, Min­neapo­lis-St. Paul is a top med­ical device indus­try hub. It’s a major part of the local econ­o­my here, and I found my career grav­i­tat­ing toward it. I’ve been with Mass­De­vice and Med­ical Design & Out­sourc­ing (part of WTWH Media) for near­ly 10 years—more than half as edi­tor-in-chief, man­ag­ing a team of edi­tors across the coun­try. I find the work incred­i­bly mean­ing­ful, as we pro­vide dai­ly medtech news and insights to peo­ple work­ing in the indus­try. As with any indus­try, medtech makes mis­takes, but at its best, it’s about improv­ing and even sav­ing people’s lives. It’s an hon­or to be a voice in the medtech space, and I take the trust that peo­ple have in our report­ing seri­ous­ly. 

The health and medtech indus­try has nev­er been bor­ing, but the past few months have been espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing. What are some gen­er­al trends you’re see­ing right now in the indus­try? 

We recent­ly pub­lished our annu­al Medtech Big 100 report that takes a deep look into the world’s 100 largest med­ical device com­pa­nies. This year, we spot­ted a trou­bling trend: Over­all R&D spend­ing growth is slow­ing down. As for­mer Medtron­ic CEO Bill George explained to MDO Man­ag­ing Edi­tor Jim Ham­merand, the prob­lem is that real growth in the device indus­try comes from new, break­through ideas that ful­fill unmet med­ical needs. “This is an indus­try that’s built on inno­va­tion,” he said. It says some­thing that Boston Sci­en­tif­ic and Intu­itive are rapid­ly mov­ing up the rank­ings among the top 20 as they each pur­sue strate­gies to dis­rupt and trans­form surgery for the bet­ter. In the case of Boston Sci­en­tif­ic, it’s about min­i­mal­ly inva­sive, cath-lab-based pro­ce­dures. (Teru­mo broke into the top 20 this year with its own catheter-deliv­ered medtech.) Intu­itive, mean­while, remains the dom­i­nant com­pa­ny in soft-tis­sue sur­gi­cal robot­ics as it con­tin­ues to roll out its next-gen da Vin­ci 5 sys­tem.   

Any pre­dic­tions or insights you have for the indus­try that you think are right around the cor­ner? 

We’re going to find out soon if Medtron­ic and John­son & John­son can com­pete against Intu­itive in the U.S. with soft-tis­sue robot­ic surgery sys­tems. Mean­while, there are count­less oth­er com­pa­nies mak­ing robot­ic surgery plays that seek to fill nich­es around what Intu­itive pro­vides — sys­tems that could be used in ambu­la­to­ry surgery sys­tems instead of hos­pi­tals or serve as robot­ic assis­tants to human sur­geons or robot­i­cal­ly per­form catheter-based pro­ce­dures. The list seems end­less. Oth­er excit­ing spaces include pulsed field abla­tion for treat­ing AFib, intravas­cu­lar lithotrip­sy (IVL) to treat cal­ci­fied blood ves­sel block­ages, dia­betes treat­ment-tech, deep brain stim­u­la­tion, brain-com­put­er inter­faces, and smarter ortho­pe­dic pro­ce­dures and implants. Next up, I’m excit­ed to see what renal den­er­va­tion (present­ly offered by Medtron­ic and Otsuka’s Recor Med­ical) can do for treat­ing drug-resis­tant hyper­ten­sion. It’s a huge unmet need.  

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

I’m going to men­tion instead a career high­light: the five years that I’ve co-host­ed the Devic­eTalks Week­ly pod­cast with my great col­league Tom Sale­mi. It start­ed as a way to keep our audi­ence of medtech indus­try insid­ers inter­act­ing with us when the pan­dem­ic pre­vent­ed us from host­ing live events, but the pod­cast has tak­en on a life of its own. I have so much fun join­ing Tom on the pod­cast every week to share my Newmarker’s News­mak­ers from Mass­De­vice, and it’s reward­ing to hear from so many indus­try insid­ers that they’re reg­u­lar lis­ten­ers. It’s also been great to see Tom and anoth­er great col­league, Kayleen Brown, cre­ate a whole fam­i­ly of Devic­eTalks pod­casts and webi­na­rs that com­ple­ment our live Devic­eTalks shows in Boston, Min­neapo­lis, and Cal­i­for­nia.  

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

Study the types of things we cov­er, and tai­lor your pitch accord­ing­ly. Mass­De­vice is a dai­ly online busi­ness jour­nal cov­er­ing med­ical device indus­try news, while Med­ical Design & Out­sourc­ing pro­vides in-depth cov­er­age of the tech­nol­o­gy. Sub­scribe to our e‑newsletters, because the sto­ries we fea­ture in the newslet­ters are the ones that are already get­ting the most atten­tion from our audi­ence. (I check Google Ana­lyt­ics mul­ti­ple times a day.) Our team’s inbox­es are full of pitch­es, and the ones that stand out are the ones that fit the types of sto­ries we cov­er. I’d also add that we have an MDO Con­trib­u­tors Net­work where indus­try experts pro­vide exclu­sive, infor­ma­tive, edu­ca­tion­al arti­cles. Go to MDO to find out more about becom­ing a con­trib­u­tor.  

Thanks, Chris, for your ded­i­ca­tion to pro­duc­ing high-qual­i­ty cov­er­age of the medtech indus­try – we’re all tru­ly lucky there are jour­nal­ists like you! Stay tuned for our next install­ment in this series where we’re fea­tur­ing anoth­er “Chris” – Chris Rupp, VP Glob­al Mar­ket­ing at NAMSA. 

And don’t for­get to catch up on our pre­vi­ous Q&As with Frank Jaskulke, vice pres­i­dent of sales and busi­ness devel­op­ment at Avio Medtech Con­sult­ing; Mark Gard­ner, founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of Gard­ner Law and Chrysalis Incu­ba­tor; Aman­da Ped­er­sen, senior edi­tor of MD+DI; and Kylle Jor­dan, busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er at Des­ti­na­tion Med­ical Cen­ter. 

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