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.