David. L. Schlotterbeck, chairman and CEO of medical device giant CareFusion, will retire on Feb. 28, 2011, the company announced Tuesday.

Schlotterbeck played a major role in the San Diego, Calif.- based company's spin off from Cardinal Health in 2009. He built the leadership team and looked over the strategic plan of the company that carried it through its first year as a publicly traded entity.

Before serving as the head of CareFusion, Schlotterbeck served as the VP and CEO of the Clinical and Medical products segment of Cardinal Health. He joined the Cardinal Health team after the company acquired Alaris Medical Systems in 2004, where he was CEO.

"With an experienced leadership team in place and a solid year behind us as a public company, I am confident that I'll leave CareFusion in an excellent position to continue to grow well into the future," Schlotterbeck said in prepared remarks. "We established a differentiated vision to lower the cost and improve the safety of health care for generations to come, and have executed against it with an enviable portfolio of industry leading medical devices and services for our customers worldwide. I am proud of the company and our position in the industry as I anticipate this new phase in my life."

In prepared remarks, Michael Losh, presiding director of the CareFusion board, thanked Schlotterbeck for his contributions to the company and said the company is working on a search for his replacement.

"We have a strong succession planning process already underway and the board has formed a special committee to manage the internal and external search for his successor," Losh said. "We will be disciplined and thorough in our approach, and expect to have a new CEO in place prior to Dave's departure in February."

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