U.S. National Library of Medicine

Introduction to Health Services Research : A Self-Study Course

Module 3: Selected Players (Federal and Private) (Page 8 of 27)

National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR)

The 1993 NIH Revitalization Acts created the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) (//www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/nichsr.html) at the National Library of Medicine to improve "...the collection, storage, analysis, retrieval, and dissemination of information on health services research, clinical practice guidelines, and on health care technology, including the assessment of such technology."

Historical information can be found in Module 2.

The overall goals of the NICHSR are:

• to make the results of health services research, including practice guidelines and technology assessments, readily available to health practitioners, health care administrators, health policy makers, payers, and the information professionals who serve these groups;
• to improve access to data and information needed by the creators of health services research; and
• to contribute to the information infrastructure needed to foster patient record systems that can produce useful health services research data as a by-product of providing health care.

NICHSR coordinates the development of new information products and services related to health services research, such as HSRProj, HSTAT, and HSRR.

Note that HealthSTAR materials that comprised HealthSTAR, have now migrated to other NLM online web-based environments:

1. journal citations are being added weekly to NLM's PubMed (//pubmed.gov/)
2. books, book chapters, technical reports and conference papers are added regularly to NLM's online catalog, LocatorPlus (//locatorplus.gov), and
3. meeting abstracts from AcademyHealth (formerly Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy and the Association for Health Services Research), Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) (formerly International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care), and the Cochrane Colloquium annual conferences have moved to the NLM Gateway (//gateway.nlm.nih.gov/).

The National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) Portal provides access to:

• Literature and Guidelines
• Data Tools and Statistics
• Grants and Funding
• Legislation (state and national)
• Training and Education
• Meetings and Conferences
• Discussion and E-mail Lists
• Alphabetic List - All Web sites in alphabetic order
• Subject List - Web sites by other categories including: Health Economics, Rural Health, and State Resources

The Subject List of Health Services Research Web Sites includes links to Federal Agencies, Associations, Data Sets and Data Sources, Epidemiology and Health Statistics, Evidence Based Medicine and Health Technology Assessment, Funding, Health Policy and Health Economics, Informatics, Public Health, Rural Health, State Resources, and Disparities.

New resources are listed on a separate page of new sites and are worth revisiting often.

Notification Services

To keep current with NLM announcements and work, including announcements of content from NICHSR, sign up for one or more NLM email lists.

For additional information about NICHSR see About NICHSR.

Discussion Questions

1. Visit NICHSR's portal if you have not visited it recently. What critical information has been collected for you to use with your health services researcher colleagues? Why is this such an important site for librarians serving health services researchers? How could the information collected by NICHSR staff assist you in providing high quality services to health services researchers?
2. What on the site would health services researchers find useful? Why?
3. How can librarians keep current with what is happening at NICHSR and at NLM? Is it important to be current with what NLM is doing? Why?