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50 years at the service of technology

50 Aniversario de Costaisa GroupCOSTAISA, the "Centro de Organización y Servicios para el Tratamiento Automático de la Información, Sociedad Anónima" ["Organisation and Services Centre for the Automatic Processing of Information, Limited Company" in English], was set up more than 50 years ago in the neighbourhood of Sarrià and has since played a key role in the major digital transformation processes of leading companies in our country, many of which have also been clients.

It all started back in 1968 when major corporations began to explore the use of large computers for the mechanised processing of data, and so Costaisa was formed, with a view to promoting the roll-out of this technology within the Spanish industrial sector.

In 1969, Costaisa installed the first mainframe computer and one of the most powerful to reach Spain, an IBM 360/40, with a staggering 32 KB of memory and cutting-edge technology for that era, such as three 7-MB disks, a printer with a capacity of 1,100 lines-per-minute, a card reader and puncher, or a newly emerged operating system called DOS.

Jobs diaryIt was one of the first IBM 360 computers to reach Catalonia, resulting in numerous companies coming to work at Costaisa to get trained before their own arrived or simply to gain additional practice. This was the case for Autopistas (now called Abertis), Catalana de Gas (Gas Natural); Corberó, Seresco, Banco Atlántico, Catalana Occidente, Centrisa, Fabril Malla (Punto Blanco), Banca Catalana, BIT or Piensos Hens (Cargill), including others.

At the turn of the 1980s, Costaisa was also the pioneer behind the introduction of microcomputers and personal computers into companies and was the first to connect to and use the Iberpac X25 network by Telefónica.

t was also the architect of one of the first hospital management systems (HIS as it is known in English) to be implemented in Spain, called "Asistencia Sanitaria", developed with FoxPro DOS for Asepeyo hospitals and which came before the current Chaman.

BackupCostaisa and Asepeyo
Costaisa has had the privilege of witnessing the emergence of IT in Spain and spearheading its implementation in major corporations including Asepeyo, when this mutual insurance company decided to fully outsource its IT systems or "computer centre" as it was called back then.

In 1990, the "Centro de Organización y Servicios para el Tratamiento Automático de la Información, Sociedad Anónima", changed its name to Costaisa SA. The company reached countless milestones in the same decade, such as the first development of preventive medicine, the first advances towards business intelligence or the first tool for creating learning content, as well as others.

The first telemedicine platform in Spain, Phemium, was set up in 2001 and then acquired by Costaisa in 2014. The end of the decade witnessed the development of Sanicost, the first vertical solution for the health sector certified by SAP in Spain.

HeadquartersSince then, Costaisa has managed to put together a product catalogue that meets the majority of needs regarding IT systems in a health centre provider, within a clinical context (hospital management HIS, telemedicine, nephrology, pathological anatomy, laboratory management and biomedical research) to non-clinical (document management, ERP, electronic invoicing, economic-financial management ECM, quality, interoperability, maintenance, human resource planning and resident management).

In 2018, the company opened its new corporate headquarters in the district of Gràcia, on Avinguda del Príncep d'Astúries, 61. With a capacity of 300 people, the new 4,000-m2 building is distributed into eight floors, including an auditorium, and training and meeting rooms equipped with the most cutting-edge equipment. Our original corporate headquarters, with a capacity of around 200 people, is still based at Pau Alcover, as is our Data Processing Centre (DPC).

50 years later, we are still making history and feeling younger than ever!