Just two months after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ game-changing bundled payment plan, Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR), took effect in 790 hospitals nationwide, the federal agency is headlong into another landmark innovation in healthcare.

In a June 13, 2016, address to the American Medical Association (AMA) Annual Meeting in Chicago, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt detailed how his agency will implement the 2015 Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, known as MACRA.

What do CJR and MACRA have in common? While MACRA is a broad payment plan for individual healthcare providers and CJR is a hospital reimbursement initiative currently limited to joint replacement surgery and rehabilitation, the two are connected in important ways. This commonality forecasts the future for CMS and the entire healthcare system loud and clear.

As we prepare to host some of Boston’s digital health innovators and aspiring entrepreneurs at our office April 27, during the Boston NewCo Festival, we’re reflecting on the mission that drives us and the other companies selected to participate in this event. We are here, quite simply, to change the world.

You’re collecting information about your patient’s health, but what are you doing with it? Does it sit—disconnected—in your digital systems? Or does it travel seamlessly between them?

The infographic below shows how hospitals and patients efficiently form a meaningful relationship and why digital connections and education are essential to value-based care.

As Meaningful Use moved to Stage 3 (MU3) in 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) added APIs (application programming interface) as an alternative or complement to patient portals.

But are these two digital health tools at odds with each other? And where do APIs fit in with Meaningful Use Stage 3?