This coming Thursday, September 24, the Byte TI 2026 Awards ceremony will be held, an event that has established itself as an annual reference for the Spanish technology sector by distinguishing the talent, innovation and excellence of companies, managers and ICT projects.
One of the main categories is the “Best CIO Award”. For this edition, around 100 applications have been submitted, which stand out for their thematic diversity, the scope of the projects and the solidity of their execution. It is noteworthy that around 65% of the projects presented had some type of relationship with Artificial Intelligence, which indicates the importance that this technology is having in the business field.
The independent jury, made up of editorial professionals and Byte TI’s regular collaborators, has evaluated the projects beyond their technical achievements since the impact it has had on the business and the level of innovation contributed to each initiative have been taken into account among the evaluation arguments.
Five professionals have been selected from among the entire universe of candidates, among whom is the future winner, who will be announced at the Delivery Gala next Thursday the 24th.
Finalists for the Best CIO Award at the Byte TI Awards 2026
Ángel Blanco, CIO of Grupo Hospitalario Quirónsalud
For the Scribe project aimed at incorporating artificial intelligence in medical consultations to reduce the administrative burden associated with clinical documentation. Its purpose is to help the doctor generate structured records from the conversation with the patient, facilitating the preparation of clinical forms, test requests, prescriptions and suggestions for the application of protocols. In this way, the professional can focus more on listening, exploration and clinical relationship, spending less time on repetitive writing tasks. The project seeks to improve the efficiency of the medical act without replacing professional judgment, since the content generated must always be reviewed and validated by the physician. Scribe is part of Quirónsalud’s digital transformation strategy and the responsible use of AI in healthcare environments. It also contributes to more humanized care, by encouraging the doctor to maintain greater visual and communicative contact with the patient. To do this, the traditional computers and screens are being removed from the consultation and the rectangular tables are being replaced with round ones, transforming the consultation into a dialogue and not a data collection. More than 7 million consultations have been carried out in all centers and all specialties and today, 55% of consultations and 75% of emergencies are managed in this way, making this project the largest in volume in the health sector.
José Luis Sierra de las Heras, CIO of Cepsa GLP Gasib
For the ONE Gasib project that has allowed a company to be transformed through technology, driving the business through people. When Sierra de las Herras joined CEPSA GLP Gasib, she did not take on the challenge of modernizing a Technology department, but rather the commitment to help transform a company that operates in a very mature market. To achieve this, a roadmap was defined based on four pillars: building robust technological foundations, digitizing operations, reinventing the customer experience and converting data and artificial intelligence into decision drivers. But the true success has not been the implementation of new technologies, but rather having positioned the technology department as a strategic partner of the business and having built a culture in which people, collaboration and innovation are the true levers of growth.
Rocío López Valladolid, CIO of ING
Under the leadership of Rocío López, ING Spain has promoted a technological transformation strategy aimed at accelerating innovation and strengthening the bank’s competitiveness through the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence and the development of a technological culture focused on people. This project has made it possible to integrate AI into the organization’s daily work to simplify processes, eliminate low-value tasks and improve productivity, making Spain the country that uses artificial intelligence the most within the ING Group, with more than 90% of the bank’s nearly 1,800 professionals active in AI. Additionally, he is leading the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence models and agent-based systems that are transforming the way technology is developed and processes executed within the organization. The creation of agents has experienced a significant acceleration and in recent months more agents have been developed than in the entire previous year, reflecting a clear commitment to transferring these capabilities to the day-to-day business. Among the most notable initiatives is the adoption of a model developed by ING Belgium to accelerate the transformation of core banking through AI agents that participate in the entire development cycle, from design to programming and deployment. This approach, which ING Spain is reusing and extending to other strategic initiatives, demonstrates how the Group’s global scale allows it to share knowledge, accelerate innovation and maximize the impact of new technologies. At the same time, the bank is incorporating agentic capabilities to perform reverse engineering processes on new technological platforms, reducing dependence on knowledge concentrated in a few people and favoring more scalable and resilient work models. These new ways of working are already allowing certain technological developments to be accelerated by up to 30%, driving a transformation that goes beyond technology and is redefining the culture, capabilities and way of working of teams.
Sergio Merchán, CIO of Iberdrola
Merchán has been selected as a finalist for the Best CIO of the Year Award for the AI4IT program, a strategic initiative to comprehensively transform the IT function through the scaled adoption of artificial intelligence and agentic capabilities. Its objective is to transform the IT department from a cost center to a value creator, driving productivity, business process transformation and software development efficiency. The program is articulated in three domains: AI for Development, AI for Operations and AI for Technology, applying agents to activities such as design, development, testing, incident management, monitoring, infrastructure, capacity, obsolescence and platform supervision. Its benefits include greater agility and reduced time-to-market, improved quality and standardization, cost optimization and talent generation through upskilling and reskilling. Started in 2024, AI4IT has evolved from experimentation to a scaling phase. The deployment contemplates 43 agents in 2026 and a forecast of 93 active agents in 2028.
Beatriz Méndez-Villamil, CIO of Amadeus
For the ASPEN project, which represents one of the largest digital transformations of Amadeus. With this, customer service has been modernized and unified, consolidating fragmented tools into a global platform that has improved the experience of customers and employees. It features a modern, unified support portal with advanced self-service capabilities, easier access to support services, and a more intuitive experience. It serves more than 180,000 clients worldwide: airlines, airports and travel agencies. In addition to modernizing customer service in the Travel business unit, it has created the operational and data foundation necessary for current and future support, automation and proactive management of AI-powered services. It features centralized agent workflows, and acts as a strategic foundation to scale the customer support ecosystem with previously unknown levels of productivity, service quality and customer satisfaction. ASPEN enables Amadeus to maximize the benefits of AI in its business transformation with AI-assisted agent experiences through intelligent recommendations and contextual support. Additionally, it enables automated case categorization and routing, reducing manual effort and speeding resolution times, and providing access to AI-powered insights and recommendations for both customers and customer service teams. Other features include intelligent self-service capabilities, predictive support models capable of identifying customer needs, and future Copilot-enabled experiences that will empower employees with real-time information.
