Students & Residents Open School Access

If you are a student or resident you can get access to the Open School. In order to set up access, you must have your account set up with the necessary information identifying you as one of these constituencies.

Access for students and residents is available through their participating institution or organization's group subscriptions. It is also available as an individual free access subscription only to students and medical school residents. Please note that verification of enrollment in school or a program may be required. 

There are a few ways to make sure your account is setup in the right way:


New Open School user - creating a new account

  1. Create your account at IHI.org
  2. You will then be prompted to provide an email address for your school or institution (it may be different from the email you use as your login username) and your year of graduation or end of your residency.
  3. After creating your account, you may go to education.ihi.org . Please note you will have to logout and log back in to access your courses. You will be prompted to login with your newly created credentials and begin to access the Open School catalog of courses.

Existing Open School user - updating an existing account

  1. Go to My Account
  2. On the "About Me" tab update the Students and Residents section by clicking on the pencil icon
  3. Under "My Details" update Primary Role by clicking the pencil icon
  4. After updating your account, you may go to education.ihi.org . Please note you will have to logout and log back in to access your courses.

Troubleshooting and FAQs

When trying to access the Open School courses, I get a message asking me to subscribe

Review your profile. Under My Details, you should set your ‘Primary Role’ to ‘Student’ or ‘Resident'. Students and Residents may be asked to very their status or current enrollment by IHI. If you are a student or resident, please also select one of the values in the ‘Student or Resident’ field.
You will then be prompted to provide an email address for your school or institution (it may be different from the email you use as your login username) and will need to provide your year of graduation or end of your residency.
Please note that IHI reserves the right to verify your current student enrollment and or status as a medical school resident at any time.
Open access to the Open School is not perpetual.

After doing so, you should return to ihi.org, log out, and log back in again. This is necessary to ensure that the required changes to your account take effect.
After doing so, you may return to education.ihi.org , and you now should have access to the Open School catalog of courses.
If you are still unable to access the Open School courses, try these steps again after completely closing and relaunching your browser. If that does not work, contact customer support.

I attempted to enroll for the Open School for free, but now I see that I have an invoice due.

Please contact support and indicate that you are a student or resident and that you have an invoice for the Open School subscription. Please note that you may be asked to very Student and Resident status. If you are not eligible for free subscription payment will be due for the use Open School subscription service.

I am a teacher/professor, and many of my students have been reporting issues with reaching the Open School. What instructions should I give them?

Please direct students to follow the instructions presented in this article. If they previously had any of the troubleshooting issues described here, please encourage them to try again following the steps described in the answers.

For your account, you need to choose from one of the below values for 'My Primary Role':

  • Currently Enrolled Student
  • Medical School Resident Currently in a Program

And complete your profile if you are a student or resident by choosing  from one of the below values under 'Student or Resident?':

  • Resident
  • Student-Full Time
  • Student-Part Time

Please note that you may be asked to verify your current status as a student or resident.