Last fall, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement  began its free online IHI Open School for Health Professions in response to statistics that say preventable mistakes in healthcare kill 44,000 to 98,000 Americans a year and harm millions more.

Since then, more than 9,000 healthcare students have signed up to learn skills such as quality improvement, patient safety, leadership, and patient-centered care. “Most schools barely touch on these topics,” says IHI in its school overview. “We’re here to fill that void.”

The school's courses are designed for students in all health fields, including medical school, nursing, administration, and  pharmacy. There are no fees, no applications, and no admissions requirements.

Currently, six online courses are offered in areas of quality improvement and patient safety, with plans for more. Each course consists of several lessons and takes about an hour to complete. Courses are developed by collaborations of faculty and presented in recorded videos on YouTube.

There are quizzes at the start and end of each lesson. A student must answer at least 75 percent of the questions correctly in order to pass. The school is developing a program for students to earn IHI Certification and continuing education credits. All courses focus on nonclinical topics.

Free resources, such as podcasts, seminars, case studies, videos, featured articles, and improvement projects are offered on the school’s website. Faculty all over the world can post materials and websites to teach students.

The school encourages students to not only take advantage of its free online offerings, but also to begin face-to-face chapters at their college campuses. There are more than 100 national and international chapters, each headed by college faculty advisors.

Students and faculty use social networking sites such as Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, and Twitter to share news about new chapters, post information about clubs and societies, run discussion forums and blogs, and offer ideas for future course development.

The school is funded by the Rx Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, and the MacArthur Foundation. In January, the Open School received $750,000 in funding from Kaiser Permanente to help it develop over the next three years.