In 1952, doctor Virginia Apgar pioneered a scoring system to quickly evaluate a newborn's physical health. 

It's given at 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth and it assesses the baby's appearance, pulse, reflexes, muscle tone, and breathing. 

The baby's medical team gets a score for each category, then adds them to gauge whether the baby needs immediate care. 

Designed to fight infant mortality the idea was simple:    if we knew which babies were in trouble, could we save them? 

Tests and algorithms don't tell the whole story. They're snapshots in time. There's not a roadmap for every uncertainty we meet.