Provation Innovation Gastroenterology Technology (2025)

The March issue of Technology Spotlight discussed Provation’s early foundational challenges and the vision and philosophy that has propelled the company’s growth and innovation.

In this second part of a 2-part series, we focus on Provation’s current and future plans, including ambitious goals of using big data to streamline various aspects of endoscopy and clinical practice. The company has prioritized data interoperability across different platforms and innovation in automating procedure- and clinic-related documentation as part of its future vision.

I had the opportunity to interview several members of the leadership team—President Ankush Kaul, Vice President of Product and Marketing Rachna Nair, and Senior Vice President of Innovation Linda Buan—and they provided further insight into Provation’s current and future initiatives.

We hope that you find this information useful for your patient care and practice needs as we all prepare for a technology-enhanced future in medicine and gastroenterology.

Dr. Kaul: Looking ahead, what are the key goals for the company in the coming years?

Mr. Kaul: Provation aims to be the global leader in innovative solutions that enhance healthcare quality and productivity. Our vision is driven by a commitment to innovation focused on patient and customer needs. We achieve this by engaging with clients and adapting based on their evolving feedback. We believe that strong, ongoing relationships are essential, which is why we prioritize clear communication, effective commercial execution, and customer feedback. These relationships help us elevate the customer experience at every touchpoint. Our long-term strategy anchors on leveraging technology—including data processing and artificial intelligence (AI)—to improve documentation, streamline workflows, assist with quality benchmarking, and enhance interoperability across healthcare platforms.

Dr. Kaul: What are some of the novel technologies and products that you are working on currently and in the short term, and what specific client solutions do you hope they will provide?

Ms. Nair: Our early adoption of machine learning (ML) capabilities within Provation Apex, tailored specifically for GI providers, set a precedent long before the concept of “machine learning” became widespread.

This forward-thinking approach underscores a larger point: Provation Apex is a platform designed with the latest technologies, including AI and ML, to facilitate continuous innovation and rapid deployment of new products. We are committed to addressing the unique needs and challenges of our customers. By leveraging innovative, AI-powered, multimodal approaches, we are working to enhance the efficiency of clinical and operational workflows.

Our current focus is on AI-driven capabilities that significantly reduce the cognitive burden on endoscopists by streamlining procedure documentation, eliminating manual entries, and ensuring more accurate and timely records. Furthermore, we are leveraging centralized, de-identified data to develop enterprise-level dashboards. These dashboards will provide practices with insight into their performance relative to quality guidelines. This can empower GI leaders and administrators to make informed decisions to improve financial performance, clinical outcomes, and operational metrics.

Dr. Kaul: How do you ensure that information related to new technology and innovation is communicated to current and potential clients?

Ms. Nair: Communication and customer engagement are at the heart of our innovation strategy at Provation. We ensure that information about new technologies and innovations is communicated through a variety of channels, including webinars, newsletters, user forums, trade shows, press releases, and direct consultations. We also actively seek feedback from our customers through surveys, focus groups, pilot and beta programs, our customer community, and our esteemed advisory board to ensure that our products meet their evolving needs.

Dr. Kaul: How do you obtain stakeholder input for product development? Can you give examples of a product or technology developed out of an unmet need articulated by providers?

Ms. Nair: We encourage our customers to become design partners, fostering deep collaboration from concept to launch. This partnership provides our customers with early access and the opportunity to influence product development.

Each stage of our development process relies on incorporating customer feedback so we can identify and prioritize the most pressing challenges they face. This process has driven the development of numerous features and enhancements within Provation Apex, ensuring that it remains a highly customized product. For instance, our customers highlighted the need for compassionate, patient-facing letters. In response to that, we are collaborating closely with selected customers to design a technology that enables the creation of empathetic and easily understandable patient letters, thereby enhancing the patient experience.

Dr Kaul: What are the company’s innovation-related short-term priorities and what is leadership’s vision for that?

Ms. Buan: Our priorities are to ease cognitive and administrative burdens, improve quality and interoperability, and optimize operational efficiency and productivity.

We understand that true innovation comes from immersing ourselves in our customers’ environments. By “going to Gemba”—visiting customer sites—we can engage directly with the pain points our customers face. This allows us to gather insight and identify opportunities to innovate the best GI workflow technologies. Together with our customers, we can solve problems in meaningful ways and drive the future.

Dr Kaul: What challenges do you foresee for innovation in this space, and what suggestions do you have for overcoming them?

Ms. Buan: This is an exciting time for innovation! However, it’s crucial that we don’t simply pursue technological advancements for the sake of novelty or create products that don’t address challenges that providers face. At Provation, we believe that true innovation must be driven by the need to solve tangible problems and improve the effectiveness of healthcare delivery.

Summary

Endoscopic and device technology has evolved significantly over the last several decades, and ancillary technologies that support GI clinical practices and operations have become more sophisticated. In this 2-part series, we have chronicled how an endoscopy procedure record documentation platform was established, how it has kept pace with the needs of ever-evolving GI endoscopy practices, and how—with the help of AI and data analytics—Provation is evolving to help solve more complex problems related to practice operations, provider burnout and fatigue, patient scheduling, and several other aspects critical for good provider and patient experiences in a practice setting. Such innovations will help advance our field in the future, with practices integrating these new paradigms to benefit providers, administrators, information technology departments, and patients.

Dr. Kaul is a consultant to Provation and member of the Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News editorial board.

This article is from the April 2025 print issue.