The High 5s Project was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006 to address continuing major concerns about patient safety around the world. The High 5s name derives from the Project s original intent to significantly reduce the frequency of 5 challenging patient safety problems in 5 countries over 5 years.
The Mission of the High 5s Project is to facilitate implementation and evaluation of standardized patient safety solutions within a global learning community to achieve measurable, significant and sustainable reductions in challenging patient safety problems.
The High 5s Project is a patient safety collaboration among a group of countries and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Patient Safety in support of the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety.
The countries that initiated the High 5s Project were Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ministers of health and leaders of six of these countries signed formal letters of support in 2007. France, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore have subsequently joined the Project.
The project has been supported by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, WHO, and the Commonwealth Fund and is coordinated by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Patient Safety which is led by The Joint Commission and Joint Commission International.
Five SOPs have been developed to support the Project. These SOPs address:
- Concentrated Injectable Medicines
- Medication Accuracy at Transitions in Care
- Correct Procedure at the Correct Body Site
- Communication Failures during Patient Handovers
- Addressing Health Care-Associated Infections
