Read the Conversation
Meeting highlights
- Tailored Innovation for Emerging Markets: Central to Zimmer Biomet’s global strategy is our commitment to solving four key customer problems: patient awareness, reducing surgical site infections, healthcare efficiency, and enhancing patient outcomes. These drive innovation and product development across the EMEA Emerging Markets, including South Africa.
- Strong Focus on South Africa: South Africa is a strategic growth hub for Zimmer Biomet. The company is expanding its portfolio and deepening local engagement, including its presence at key medical congresses, and showing its commitment to long-term engagement on the continent.
- Strategic Use of AI and Robotics: The company is integrating AI and predictive analytics into patient pathways to improve outcomes and personalize post-operative recovery. Zimmer Biomet’s acquisition of Monogram represents a significant advancement in robotic orthopedic surgery, with the potential to support future autonomous capabilities pending regulatory approvals.
- Access and Affordability as Core Priorities: Antos emphasized the importance of aligning with healthcare systems to ensure both quality and affordability, particularly in underserved populations in Africa, by segmenting markets and offering technology suited to varying economic capacities.
- Building the Emerging Markets Region: Since joining in 2020, Antos has led the creation and growth of EMEA’s Emerging Markets, now the fastest-growing region globally for Zimmer Biomet. He expressed pride in the team’s achievements and a personal commitment to Africa’s healthcare transformation.
EF: How do you see this year from your perspective?
EA: It's been a strong year for Zimmer Biomet in Africa. We've made good progress with market development efforts that align closely with our Mission. That said, it's hard to ignore the global uncertainty from tariffs to trade tensions, which continue to shape the geopolitical and economic landscape. Even so, we are well prepared, and our team has handled the volatility well.
EF: How do you balance your priorities across the emerging markets?
EA: As a global company, one of our primary responsibilities is determining how to apply our broader strategic goals in various local contexts effectively. Regardless of our location, we consistently face the same four key customer problems, which impact our patients.
The first is patient awareness of the solutions available to them to reduce their joint pain. Many patients are unaware of the options available to treat musculoskeletal conditions. That’s why we continue to invest in digital engagement, patient management tools, and surgeon education platforms across all regions, to raise awareness, help people act earlier, and make more informed decisions.
The second challenge is infection. This is likely the most significant issue we encounter regarding joint replacement surgery. Infection remains a challenge in joint replacement surgery, particularly in regions where healthcare infrastructure is still evolving. That is why we continue to focus on reducing surgical site infections through smarter instrumentation, care team training, data-enabled surgical planning, and adherence to safety protocols.
The third issue is efficiency. With rapidly growing populations and increased demand for active lifestyles, people want to stay mobile regardless of their age. The age of the patients we treat is decreasing, while older patients are seeking to remain active for longer. This trend prompts us to focus on technologies that are designed to streamline the surgical workflow, reduce variability, and support more predictable outcomes to help patients recover more quickly and return to their daily lives sooner.
The fourth challenge is directly tied to our company’s Mission to alleviate pain and improve quality of life. We’re always looking at how we can enhance patient outcomes by combining our high-performance implants with personalized, pre- and post-operative care enabled by real-time data and interactive patient care platforms to offer better care for patients in South Africa.
Solving these problems is what guides our innovation efforts, shaping our product and technology pipeline, influencing what we bring to the African market, and defining how we measure success.
EF: Can you tell us about how the foot and ankle portfolio is expanding?
EA: We brought together two strong, complementary forces to reshape what’s possible in the Foot and Ankle segment. By combining Paragon 28’s highly specialized commercial expertise with Zimmer Biomet’s global scale, contracting strength, and innovation capabilities, we are positioning ourselves to be the partner of choice in Foot and Ankle care – delivering more value to customers and, ultimately, to the patients. This is a part of our broader diversification strategy with a focus on fast-growing segments. Our South African operations are a standout example. With 28 active operations, South Africa represents our second-largest footprint in the EMEA region. While the US remains our biggest market, South Africa continues to be one of our strongest international platforms.
In 2024, we acquired VIMS, a French company specializing in intra-operative medical imaging solutions, particularly for laparoscopic and arthroscopic procedures. This is an innovative approach that leverages the efficacy of AI. These are towers equipped with integrated 7K cameras, among the highest-resolution systems available in this space, subject to ongoing clinical validation. It is designed to support various surgical approaches by providing high-quality imaging and facilitating live video and audio streaming for educational or collaborative purposes. This addition forms part of our innovation pipeline, whether developed in-house through R&D or acquired externally, to support Zimmer Biomet’s long-term strategy.
EF: Why is it important for you as a company to go beyond delivering your product portfolio and raising awareness, but also be part of conversations that are shaping healthcare systems?
EA: At the core of what we do is making sure we do right by the patient. This involves aligning with healthcare systems and working to ensure that patients have access to the care they need. We want to provide the highest quality and affordability, especially in Africa. This is important because not every part of the market, regardless of the country, can afford our most innovative technology. That's where we come in. Our goal is to provide high-quality products and solutions that deliver the desired outcomes for people, while maintaining a fair and accessible price point aligned with local healthcare system capabilities.
EF: Is there something in the company’s innovation pipeline or some upcoming treatments that are particularly exciting from a medical perspective?
EA: What's exciting is that you may have heard about our latest acquisition, Monogram. This was a technology-driven acquisition that aims to bring robotic-assisted surgery in orthopaedics to another level. This technology explores the possibility of fully or semi-autonomous robotic surgery for large joints and extremities. That's ground-breaking. You typically see this type of automation in soft tissue robotics, especially in general surgery, with some renowned multinational companies. But in orthopaedics? This is breakthrough territory. Although not yet commercially available, the technology has received FDA clearance for specific indications, and we are actively planning its integration into our robotic platform. The goal is to offer a fully automated solution for orthopaedic procedures, which is something we haven't seen before.
EF: How are you as a company distilling the AI noise and applying AI to genuinely useful applications that make a difference?
EA: AI is the passport of today. It all comes down to how you use it. For us, AI plays a strategic role in optimizing care not just during surgery, but across the entire patient journey. That includes qualifying the patient, ensuring the right preparation, approach, and managing recovery after the procedure. We’ve implemented an AI-enabled data management system to streamline this pathway, with appropriate safeguards in place to comply with data protection and privacy regulations. It enables us to conduct predictive analyses based on data from interventions and surgeries, which helps improve accuracy, consistency, and individualization in care delivery. This level of precision is especially valuable in tailoring recovery. Not every joint is the same. Not every patient heals the same way. With AI, we can personalize recovery plans based on individual anatomy and physiology, thereby accelerating the healing process and enhancing outcomes, while maintaining clinical efficiency.
EF: Looking back, what are you most proud of achieving over the last five years in Zimmer Biomet?
EA: I joined the company in May 2020, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn’t the ideal time to start something new, but some things are simply beyond our control. When I joined, my mandate was to develop and establish Emerging Markets as an independent region within Zimmer Biomet, a task that hadn’t been accomplished before. Since then, we’ve undergone several shifts, redefining our geographic priorities, reorganizing our structure, adjusting both our commercial setup and support functions, and refining our portfolio. The focus has been on building a sustainable, compliant, and profitable growth pipeline. Today, we’ve managed to become the fastest-growing region globally for Zimmer Biomet.
EF: If you were to give a final message to our readers or if you were to challenge the healthcare or MedTech sector to do something better, what would it be?
EA: I have a deep appreciation for Africa, and I spend a significant amount of time there throughout the year. There are three main reasons for that. First, the people, there’s a warmth and resilience that stands out. Second, the region holds enormous potential. And third, the level of unmet needs is striking, especially when it comes to healthcare, which is directly linked to our work.
Being in the healthcare sector gives our work real meaning. Our Mission, to alleviate pain and improve quality of life, is especially relevant in Africa, where inequality has created serious gaps in access and awareness. There’s a lot of important work to be done, from improving patient education and engaging with local authorities to encouraging the adoption of innovative technologies and tailoring global solutions to local realities.
I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved so far at Zimmer Biomet, of all our team members who are contributing to a more equitable and innovative future of health for people across Africa. And there’s more ahead. We are co-creating solutions with local stakeholders and building trust through transparency. We have strong backing, not only from our EMEA leadership but also at a global level, to continue shaping the transformation that’s already underway in Africa’s healthcare landscape.
