End of year message from our Managing Director, Hugo Breda

End of year message from our Managing Director, Hugo Breda Meta description: Another year of transformation, innovation, and collaboration at Johnson & Johnson

I’ve been at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for 25 years, and at the end of each year, I’ve looked back with pride and awe at what we’ve achieved. 

2022 stood out to me as yet another pride and awe-filled year, especially about how my team continued to make a difference for our patients, customers and the entire healthcare system. 

There’s no doubt about the role that digital transformation has played in supporting our healthcare services with surgical recovery, and my organisation experienced a pivotal moment as it 
officiated its place in the digital world by rebranding from Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices to Johnson & Johnson MedTech

I know how seriously my colleagues take their role as MedTech industry partners to the NHS & HSE in Ireland, and we are committed to our ambition to champion innovation that addresses the challenges most pertinent to our healthcare services and the patients they serve. 

Take the Ethicon team, for example, who have been responding to the increased demand for training after the pandemic. To support surgeons across the country, they tasked themselves with bringing training right to the hospital doorstep with their Ethicon bus.  Our first-ever roadshow in the UK & Ireland visited 46 hospitals, and we welcomed almost 2,000 customers onboard to demonstrate the role of digital innovation in supporting healthcare systems to tackle the backlog of patients waiting for treatment.

The waiting list itself isn’t a new issue for our NHS. I recently enjoyed this article from one of my Directors in the Strategic Capabilities team (It’s a function of the business that creates bespoke customer solutions, utilising the breadth of tech and services & solutions offering we have within J&J to drive efficiencies, create capacity, and treat more patients). Shediscusses her time in the NHS spent tackling some of the longest waiting lists in the country. The challenge may not be a new one, but as an organisation, we continue to work in partnership with our customers to innovate and bring new solutions that can help improve care to patients by supporting hospitals to reduce their length of stay and therefore have an impact on the waiting list. 

It’s great to see this initiative getting recognition from customers at University Hospitals Morecambe Bay Trust, highlighting their GIRFT recognition in enhanced recovery and for reducing length of stay for elective total hip and knee replacements. We’ll be sharing more in the weeks to come about how our Depuy Synthes organisation has been working collaboratively with clinical leads and with our Strategic Capabilities team to make this project a success.

It's not just the hard metrics that need to be delivered, and I’m appreciative of the work our Strategic Capabilities team has done in this department. We’re listening to our customers needs now more than ever, and this year the ask has been support in improving patient pathways and staff experience, supporting staff resilience in a ‘post-COVID’ workforce and leadership development as we navigate another year of challenges. We’re committed to helping the NHS and HSE meet these needs with evidence-based solutions that will support the culture needed to reduce the waiting lists.

Partnership and collaboration have been the backbone of delivering our ambition this year, and this will not change in 2023. Partnership with our customers, yes, but also with each other, with industry partners, with government, and with charitable associations that make it their mission every day to make our industry equitable and accessible to all. Like for World Stroke Day, when our Cerenovus colleagues attended the Stroke Association Saving Brains event held in parliament to give MPs a unique opportunity to learn about life-changing Mechanical Thrombectomy treatment and hear from stroke survivors themselves that have benefitted from this treatment.

Truthfully, when I look back on each of my years at J&J, there’s one thing that has remained truly consistent, and that’s the pride I feel working alongside my brilliant colleagues in this organisation in their quest to help patients and healthcare professionals. It is the people that make Johnson & Johnson MedTech what it is, and I’ve enjoyed being introduced to new faces and getting to know familiar faces even better. Reading the employee spotlight stories over the year helped with this; I learned about why ethics are important to our Strategic Capabilities Senior Director, Bala Balaguru; How our DePuy Synthes Business Unit Director, Gavin Meadows, has gained diverse experiences living in different European countries during his career; and the way our Ethicon Wound Closure Specialist, Shabiha Azam has educated young minds about the lasting impact of the J&J credo. 

I’m already excited about what next year has in store and another year of transformation, innovation, and collaboration. But before then, I’m looking forward to spending time with loved ones and relaxing over the holiday season and wish the same for all of you. See you in 2023!