The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) (www.IHI.org) and API have developed an approach for spreading good ideas within an industry. Using collaborative projects focused on a single topic of interest to multiple organizations as a model, for example, reducing delays in a hospital or caring for patients with a chronic disease, IHI and API hope to standardize their current approach and extend it beyond health care.

This approach applies:

• To organize with multiple, similar sites, for example a global manufacturer or a national service provider
• Within a sector of the economy that has multiple sites that do not usually compete directly with each other, for example, education