Medical discharges, surgery reports, diagnoses, emergency visits; a multitude of hospital documents and information must be coded daily, from data on waiting lists to admission and discharge reports, including outpatient consultations. It is precisely in this coding that the company Asho focuses, which closed 2024 with a turnover close to 2.5 million euros.
For this year, the Catalan company expects to increase its sales by 10%, thus exceeding 2.7 million euros. To pursue this 10% growth, the company will emphasize its software, as well as training and, above all, artificial intelligence. "The AI department is the one that will grow the most," as explained by Asho's managing director, Ruth Cuscó, and the company's commercial director, Carlos Sevillano.
The application of AI will have a notable effect on Asho: coders will no longer have to read dozens of reports with dozens of pages; AI will do it for them. Thus, they will be able to set aside a totally manual task of highlighter in hand, to dedicate themselves to validating what the AI does. As Cuscó emphasizes, this professional review is indispensable, since it involves "data too sensitive to take for granted" by placing blind trust in a machine.
This commitment to AI represents "a very important investment and a bet on the future; we are moving from analog to digital," Sevillano stresses. To advance in this direction, seven of Asho's 27 employees are focused on this process. The company plans to add three more people to its staff in the coming months, in addition to about 40 freelancers depending on the volume of work.
Asho also looks abroad: it operates in Portugal, Andorra, and Chile, and does not rule out opening up to new markets soon. For now, it focuses on consolidating its presence in Chile, where it has a key partner, and on consolidating and expanding its presence in Portugal.
The company, which this year has added strategic contracts such as a coding tender for the Institut Català de la Salut of more than 259,000 euros, faces the future determined to continue growing as Asho, and does not consider a sale of the company, despite receiving offers in this regard: "We believe in our products and we are young enough to carry it forward; today we are not for sale."