Important Notes

Overview of IHI Forum and IHI Scientific Symposium Posters

Poster displays at the IHI Forum and IHI Scientific Symposium chronicle specific improvement projects. They are an integral part of the conference, providing an opportunity for organizations to share their improvement strategies and celebrate their successes with other  attendees. Recommendations for creating posters that demonstrate quality improvement projects in health care are included below. While these are not requirements for your poster, we strongly encourage posters to contain most (if not all) of these recommended components.

Posters should not advertise products or services.

Submitting Final Poster

You are required to include the following information:

• Project Title (15 or less words)

• Description (100 or less words)

• Aim (15 or less words)

• Actions Taken (50 or less words)

• Summary of Results (50 or less words)

• Please try and submit only for yourself and not for colleagues

• You are required to upload your final poster as a PDF file.

• Please ensure that all of the information you submit is complete and final as you will not have the opportunity to edit your information.

• You will receive an automatic email from our system confirming that your information was uploaded successfully. If you do not receive an email from our webmaster account, please contact storyboards@ihi.org confirm that your poster was uploaded successfully.

You will receive further information from Lauren Cameron, IHI’s Event Manager, at a later date.

Tips for Creating a Poster on Quality Improvement in Health Care

Improvement Advisors at IHI developed the following recommendations for creating posters that demonstrate quality improvement projects in health care. Your poster submission should include the following:

1. A clearly defined Aim Statement with an expected change in outcome indicator and time to expected change in the outcome indicator.
2. An outline of your project design/strategy for change that explains how you will reach your Aim.
3. An explanation of the changes made to achieve improvement in the targeted process.
4. Graphical representation of improvement. The use of statistical process control (SPC) tools (especially annotated run charts or Shewhart control charts) is preferred to demonstrate the performance of data over time. Bar and pie charts should not be used when building a poster for Quality Improvement projects.
5. An indication that changes were tested and/or adapted to the local environment/organization prior to implementation.
6. An explanation of how multiple measures were used to understand and show improvement in the target process.
7. A listing of the multi-disciplinary team that was involved in achieving improvement (elements may include: content experts, patients, leadership, etc.)
8. A demonstrated sustainability in improvement indicated by the data (if possible).
9. A short summary of the lessons learned from the work and/or the message for readers.

Please note that these are recommendations and not requirements for posters.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Layout
Aim to create an attractive display that will draw other participants to your poster and communicate clearly the main points of your display. The following guidelines may be found helpful:

Appearance
Creative use of pictures, graphs, text blocks, color, headlines, etc., can attract others to your storyboard, and enhance communication of your message. Avoid making your poster too “text heavy.” Focus on the highlights of your display. If it can be communicated with numbers, graphs, or other visuals do so.

Virtual Forum & Scientific Symposium
All content on the poster must fit on one page. There is no specific layout or size needed. The electronic posters will be made available during and after the IHI Forum.

In-Person Forum
Posters will be mounted on 3 foot x 5 foot panel boards. The usable posting space is the full 3 feet wide x 5 feet high.