​For more than 30 years, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has used improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and health care across the world.

We bring awareness of safety and quality to millions, accelerate learning and the systematic improvement of care, develop solutions to previously intractable challenges, and mobilize health systems, communities, regions, and nations to reduce harm and deaths.

We work in collaboration with the growing IHI community to spark bold, inventive ways to improve the health of individuals and populations.

We generate optimism, harvest fresh ideas, and support anyone, anywhere who wants to profoundly change health and health care for the better.

Pursuing Safe and High-Quality Care

Despite some successes in some places, our health systems still have too much waste and harm, and too little patient-centeredness and care equity. To accelerate progress, we convene and empower quality- and safety-focused visionaries, experts, leaders, and frontline clinicians to learn from best practices and from each other.

We uncover new approaches to help leaders, patients, and caregivers embrace, create, test, and implement strategies to drive change. And we collaborate with partners around the world to achieve sustainable, large-scale improvements in quality and safety.

Improving the Health of Populations

Our global reach enables us to work collaboratively with individuals and organizations in places where health is shaped — in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and faith communities — driving significant improvements in health. We discover, test, and spread innovative ways to improve health; lower individual and societal costs; and increase equity in populations worldwide.

By forging partnerships between health systems and communities, we can improve health outcomes for people with distinct health needs. We build and scale multi-sector, learning-focused movements, such as 100 Million Healthier Lives, to empower individuals and advance health and wellbeing.

Building the Capability to Improve

Everyone has the potential to improve health and health care, and we are committed to supporting all who aim to do so. We bring together like-minded colleagues at global conferences, trainings, and career development programs to help grow the safety, improvement, and leadership skills of the health and health care workforce. We advance learning by leading collaborative initiatives that enrich, accelerate, and spread the latest improvement ideas and leadership strategies.

Through the IHI Open School and our membership programs, we build global communities of interprofessional learners who continually develop their skills in improvement, safety, system design, and leadership to drive results. And, increasingly we recognize and support individuals, family members, and friends whose daily efforts represent the majority of health care actions.

Innovating and Sparking Action

To accelerate improvement, it is critical to leverage collective learning. A problem faced on one continent may have a solution waiting on another. We demonstrate the power of improvement science by sharing practical tools, change ideas, improvement measures, white papers, audio and video segments, real-world stories, and more. We collaborate with the improvement community to uncover, invent, test, popularize, and spread ideas from all corners of the world that can dramatically improve patient care and the health of populations.

IHI is proud to have significant work underway with partners in nearly every region of the world, collaborating with visionaries, leaders, and frontline practitioners to seek and achieve science-based improvements in health and health care.

We empower and support local change agents to accelerate improvement in vital areas, including maternal and infant health, health equity, end-of-life care, care and health for older adults, care and health for people with complex needs, care and health for people living with mental health and substance use disorders, waste and cost reduction, and the spread of the Triple Aim (better care, better health, and lower costs).

IHI Timeline

View or download the complete ​IHI Timeline.