IMPROVED OUTLOOK After a successful knee replacement surgery, Mrs. Kamatchi (left, with daughter Dhanalakshmi) can focus on her family and household tasks, not on her pain.
Replacing a Knee, Restoring a Life
Mrs. Ramasamy Kamatchi is a 57-year-old farmer in Trichy, India, whose life has been transformed by the DePuy REACH™ Knee. After suffering from debilitating knee pain for more than 10 years, she underwent knee-replacement surgery and is again able to care for her family and enjoy activities with her grandchildren. “Now I can pay less attention to my knee and more to my family,” says Mrs. Kamatchi. “I am very happy and satisfied.”
DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. is making life-changing technologies accessible and affordable to hundreds of millions of underserved patients.
By developing new R&D and commercial models that meet specific emerging market needs, DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. is making such life-changing technologies accessible and affordable to hundreds of millions of underserved patients like Mrs. Kamatchi. The company is also committed to the safe and effective use of these products.
By 2016, India will need three times as many joint-replacement surgeons as it has today to treat the number of patients suffering from debilitating arthritis. Helping to address this gap is the state-of-the-art DePuy Institute for Advanced Education and Research, which opened near Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, in July 2011. Through the transfer of knowledge and development of skills, this facility will increase the capacity of India's health care professionals to care for people suffering from osteoarthritis, and spinal and neurological disorders.
“As we teach, we also learn more about the needs of surgeons and their patients, and we can feed these insights into our product innovation and market access strategies,” says Michael del Prado, Company Group Chairman, Asia-Pacific. “These strategies work together to help build health care capacity in India and throughout the region.”
The DePuy Institute in Chennai is one of more than 25 professional education centers that the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies has built around the world to serve unique patient needs in emerging markets. 
Managing for Growth
A number of strategic decisions were made in 2011 to reshape the portfolio of devices and diagnostics businesses and redeploy resources to accelerate growth over the long term.
In April 2011, Johnson & Johnson announced it planned to acquire Synthes, Inc., a premier global developer and manufacturer of orthopaedics devices. The acquisition, which would be the largest purchase in Johnson & Johnson history, will strengthen the Company's leadership position in the global orthopaedics market.
In September 2011, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. announced an agreement to acquire SterilMed, Inc., a leader in the reprocessing and remanufacturing of medical devices. This broadens the portfolio of products offered to increasingly cost-conscious hospital customers.
The Cardiovascular Care franchise exited the drug-eluting stent business to better focus on areas with the most significant medical needs and the greatest opportunities for growth, such as its leading electrophysiology business.
We continue to make progress on all aspects of the Synthes acquisition, including the integration planning process, and continue to expect the transaction to close in the first half of 2012. Synthes and the DePuy franchise will be well positioned to succeed at a time of dramatic change in the orthopaedics market, offering patients, surgeons and hospitals a broad range of innovative technologies to meet their orthopaedics needs.