The High 5s project is a multi-country, multi-agency collaborative initiative to improve patient safety around the world. Launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006, the mission of the 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 in hospitals from several countries over five years. The High 5s project is best characterized as supporting the development and application of innovative, specific standard operating protocols (SOPs) through the collection, reporting and analysis of data, and establishing an electronic collaborative learning community.