Whether academic or athletic, there is a limit to what modern humans are capable of. The reasons for this have a lot to do with our genetic makeup. But what if that changed?

By taking a look at Palliative Connect, a project the team highlights as a particularly well designed one, we can peek into the principles that are filling the pages of that playbook—principles that can help practitioners across the health care landscape who will increasingly have the chance to use machine learning and other sophisticated digital tools to improve health care.

“It was a monumental sneeze, for sure,” said Lou, who remembers feeling what he describes as, “a twinge in my chest, but no great pain.” Twelve hours later, that twinge grew into “pain that was through the roof,” and Lou and his wife Cathy headed to the Emergency Room at their local hospital where an x-ray revealed that that “twinge” was due to blood pooling in his chest because of a severed artery.

In medicine, stories often hold the keys to making a diagnosis or improving patient care. But, central to storytelling is the ability to effectively communicate, not just with patients and their families, but also with colleagues and mentors.

On June 20, President Trump issued an executive order rolling back the separations of undocumented families in favor of family detention. However, for the thousands of kids who remain detained separately or in foster care, physicians warn their experiences with cumulative trauma and chronic stress could cause irreparable lifelong harm.

The beams are creating the framework for a 250,000-square foot expansion of the hospital and a 26,000-square foot renovation of its Emergency Department. The steel framework is on track to be completed in July.

To make sure that good ideas to enhance healthcare are not lost due to a lack of resources, a growing number of centers at Penn Medicine organize forums to pitch ideas to improve medical devices and technology, hold annual competitions to fund studies to improve patient care while keeping costs down, and sponsor seed grants for programs focused on patients.

Homelessness, mental health, and more recently, the opioid crisis: Librarians across the country have been on the front lines tackling these issues for years. They guide patrons towards health literature. They connect them to the right care. And they even administer the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone, when necessary.

Earlier this week, former Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell announced that he’s living with Parkinson’s disease. Along with leading edge research and advancements in therapies for Parkinson’s patients, Rendell’s decision to make his diagnosis public is helping to shine a light on what a Parkinson’s diagnosis really means.

It is morning at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). A palliative care nurse arrives to start her work day. Her team plays a vital role; she and the doctors and nurse practitioners she works with are called in to have some of the most important and powerful conversations in the lives of some patients and their families.