Health care needs dynamic supports for change to move forward. Among the most important forms of support are access to improvement knowledge, routes to new practices, and ways to interact with experts and colleagues who have led change. IHI.org provides solutions ready for action, knowledge about improvement, and trustworthy content focused on health care quality across a broad array of Topics; it is organized to address the personal "real time" needs of the user; and it creates communities of users with common interests and the opportunity to interact with world-class experts in the field.

IHI.org proposes to make this knowledge for improvement free and available to all in the Topics area of the website, creating an interactive improvement community where people continuously exchange knowledge and share experiences. Since IHI’s mission is to accelerate the improvement of health care worldwide, an online resource is the logical, scaleable vehicle for achieving this goal without growing the organization at an unsustainable rate.

IHI.org is designed for health care providers and organizations that are seeking to improve the care they give. The IHI.org community comprises physicians, nurses, technicians, policy makers, executives, administrators, managers, support staff, government leaders, and many others who have an interest in improving health care. Individual consumers are welcome to browse the site, and their role will grow as the website matures.

If you are a patient who would like to learn more about health care improvement, we invite you to explore our site. Please keep in mind that patients should always consult with their health care professionals about any aspect of their health, and patients who rely on the information provided on IHI.org do so at their own risk. (Please see our Terms of Use.)  We have suggested a few resources for patients — links to other sites that patients may find more useful in answering their specific health-related questions and information needs.

For each Topic we recruit an expert host and a number of other select experts in the relevant disciplines, both "formal" experts such as leading academicians, and "informal" experts such as individual physicians who have broken through customary performance profiles. Most IHI.org Content Advisors are committed and actively involved faculty in other Institute for Healthcare Improvement programs and activities.

We collect information that you choose to share with us when you register for IHI.org. This information is only collected with your permission and may be updated by you at any time. The information collected at registration allows us to better understand you, your position, your organization type, and your interests. Please see Your Privacy for a full description of how your information is used and protected.

Usually, we do not mind if you have a simple link from your website to IHI.org. However, you must first ask for our permission if you intend to frame our site or incorporate pieces of it into a different site or product. You are not allowed to link to IHI.org if you create or post illegal, obscene, or offensive content, or if the link in any way has a negative impact on our reputation. For more information, please see our Terms of Use, or to request permission to link to IHI.org please Contact Us.

Our vision is that over time users of IHI.org all over the world will contribute their ideas, lead and participate in discussions, and share tools, stories and lessons learned. IHI.org is designed to mobilize the latent wisdom and knowledge of local sites, adapting and adopting the more conceptual lessons that the Content Advisors can bring. Users of the site learn from the Topic Expert Hosts and Content Advisors, as well as from each other. Formal academic knowledge does not seem able to replace the practical voices of peers who can say, "I had the same problem; let me tell you how I solved it."

The following system specifications are recommended for the optimal use of IHI.org:

Minimum:
• 400 MHz Pentium processor
• Microsoft Windows 98, NT4.0 w/SP3, 2000, XP or later
• 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended)
• 20 MB free disk space
• Resolution at least 800 x 600
• Windows supported pointing device: Mouse, pen, etc.
• Internet Explorer 5.0 or later

Recommended:
• 800 MHz Pentium processor
• Resolution at least 1024 x 768
•128 MB RAM

Minimum:
• Mac OS X 10.1
• 400 MHz processor or faster PowerPC G4
• 128 MB RAM
• 20 MB free disk space

Recommended:
• 800 MHz processor or faster PowerPC G4
• 256 MB RAM
• A scroll-wheel, three button mouse

Yes. A cookie is information that IHI.org stores on the hard drive of your computer so that it can remember you each time you return to the site. Typically, a cookie records your preferences or status. At IHI.org we record your name and registration status on your local machine. No other websites can access your IHI.org cookies and you can delete it at any time.

For example, you can choose to automatically login to IHI.org by selecting the "Remember my password and login on this computer" option on the Login page. The site will automatically identify you each time you visit using the same computer, and you will have immediate access to areas of the site available only to registered users. Your browser must be set to accept cookies for this feature to work correctly.

When you view a PDF document in a Web browser, all of the Acrobat Reader tools are available in the browser, but not the menu bar. Many keyboard commands are mapped to the Web browser rather than to Acrobat Reader, so some Acrobat Reader keyboard shortcuts may not be available in the browser window. If you prefer not to view PDF documents in the Web browser, you can set up Acrobat Reader so that it opens and displays the PDF document in a normal Acrobat Reader window.

If your Web browser does not display PDF documents in the browser window, or if you prefer not to view PDF documents in the Web browser, you can set up Acrobat Reader as a helper application. When Acrobat Reader is a helper application, PDF documents are viewed in an Acrobat Reader window outside the Web browser. When Acrobat Reader works as a helper application, you cannot use Fast Web View (which allows page-at-a-time downloading), form submittal in a browser, or search highlighting on the Web.To use Acrobat Reader as a helper application:

1) Choose Edit > Preferences, and then select Options in the list on the left.
2) Deselect Display PDF in Browser, and click OK.

To make the IHI.org pages load faster, you can turn off the display of images in your browser.

Steps for some common browsers (if your browser is not listed, please consult your browser's documentation):

Internet Explorer (Windows):

1. Select Tools / Internet Options, and choose the Advanced tab.
2. Scroll to the Multimedia section (about halfway down) and deselect the "Show Pictures" checkbox.

Internet Explorer (Macintosh):

1. Select Explorer / Preferences, and open the Web Browser category by clicking the arrow next to it.
2. Choose Web Content, and deselect the "Show Pictures" checkbox.

Netscape (Windows and Macintosh):

1. Select Edit / Preferences (Windows) or Netscape / Preferences (Macintosh), and open the Privacy & Security category by clicking the arrow next to it.
2. Choose Images, and select the "Do not load any images" option.

Mozilla Firefox (Windows and Macintosh):

1. Select Tools / Options (Windows) or Firefox / Preferences (Macintosh), and choose the Web Features category.
2. Deselect the "Load Images" checkbox.

Safari (Macintosh):

1. Select Safari / Preferences, and select the Appearance category.
2. Deselect the "Display images when the page opens" checkbox.

IHI's office is located in the Charles Hotel complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square:

These links may be blocked by a pop-up blocker in your browser. IHI.org uses several pop-up windows on the site (although we never display a pop-up unless you explicitly click a link).

Examples of pop-ups on IHI.org include:

• Help on the login/register page
• Email This Page link in the left-hand navigation
• Links to external websites (e.g., in the Resources sections)
• Links to downloadable Tools (in the Tools section)
• Enrollment forms (in the Programs section)
• Rate This Item
• Reports in Workspace (Improvement Tracker, FMEA Tool, Trigger Tool for Measuring ADEs)

The new Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) includes a new pop-up blocker feature that may prevent you from seeing pages correctly on IHI.org. For more information on XP SP2 see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/features.mspx.

To enable pop-up windows for the entire IHI.org site, which will ensure that your browsing experience is as trouble-free as possible, please follow these instructions based on the type of pop-up blocker you have:

Windows XP SP2:

1. In Internet Explorer, select Tools / Internet Options.
2. Select the Privacy tab, and then press the Settings button in the Pop-up Blocker section.
3. Type "www.ihi.org" (without the quotes) in the "Address of Web site to Allow" box.
4. Press Add, and then press Close.

Google Toolbar:

• Click the "Blocking popups" button on the toolbar.

MSN Toolbar:

• Click the "Pop-ups Blocked" button on the toolbar.

All of the content that was included on QualityHealthCare.org is now included on IHI.org. The Topics, Community, and Workspace sections on IHI.org are identical to those sections in the "old" QualityHealthCare.org. The Discussion Groups that were taking place on QualityHealthCare.org have been moved over, unchanged, to the Community section of IHI.org. If you created Improvement Trackers or used the Interactive Tools on QualityHealthCare.org, you will find everything exactly as it was, in the Workspace section of the website.