HealthSTAR Unique Journal Citations Migrate to PubMed (copy of NLM Technical Bulletin article which appears on the NLM web site at the following URL: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj99/mj99_healthstar.html)

The HealthSTAR database provides access to the published literature of health services technology, administration, and research.  HealthSTAR is produced jointly by NLM's National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/nichsr.html) and the American Hospital Association (AHA) (http://www.aha.org).  As with other NLM databases, HealthSTAR is undergoing fundamental changes as part of the Library's System Reinvention initiative.  

HealthSTAR Data

Currently, HealthSTAR contains MEDLINE citations from 1975 to the present that constitute 95% of the database.

HealthSTAR also contains additional, unique records specially indexed for it from three sources:  journal articles with an emphasis on health care administration, selected and indexed on an ongoing basis by AHA; journal articles, technical and government reports, meeting papers and abstracts, and books and book chapters on health services research, clinical practice guidelines, and health care technology assessment selected and indexed on an ongoing basis through NICHSR; and
a collection of 9,451 retrospective (1975-1981) monographs, technical reports, and theses from the National Health Planning Information Center (NHPIC).

HealthSTAR System Reinvention Actions

Phase I * February 1999
HealthSTAR System Reinvention actions are being conducted in phases.  As a first phase, CATLINE records from NLM's book catalog were removed from HealthSTAR in February 1999.  These records are now available through NLM's new Web-based Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) called LOCATORplus.  

Phase 2 - Current
The second phase is to merge HealthSTAR unique journal citations into the PubMed database.  This process is underway and HealthSTAR journal citations have already begun to appear in an enhanced MEDLINE via NLM's PubMed interface.  The enhanced MEDLINE database will now be defined as including citations from the approximately 840 journals previously indexed only for HealthSTAR. Included in these 840 journal titles are 244 currently indexed  titles; the rest of the 840 are ceased titles, changed titles, deselected titles, etc. 

With the initial load of about 169,000 citations of HealthSTAR journal citations into PubMed (through the 9903 Entry Month), the Entrez Date [EDAT] was based on Date of Publication [DP].   

Subsequent monthly updates of HealthSTAR unique journal citations added to PubMed will have a current Entrez Date [EDAT] value assigned for the day the citations first appeared in PubMed.  These unique HealthSTAR citations are nearly identical in format to other MEDLINE citations. The integration of the HealthSTAR journal citations into PubMed yields one seamless display of the results.  

There are a few fields or field values unique to HealthSTAR citations that can be seen in the various PubMed display formats, e.g., Secondary Source ID (SI) and Special List Indicator (LI).  It is expected that searching enhancements will be implemented in PubMed to accommodate unique HealthSTAR fields later in the summer, after the new Advanced PubMed search screens are available.  

Phase 3 - Future
The third phase under System Reinvention actions will be to migrate remaining unique records in HealthSTAR (technical and government reports and books and book chapters) into LOCATORplus.  Processes for converting these citations are under development.  

HealthSTAR Remains Searchable on IGM

Until conversion processes for both HealthSTAR journal and book records are completed early next year, users can continue to search the HealthSTAR database via Internet Grateful Med (http://igm.nlm.nih.gov) and to search LOCATORplus (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/locatorplus/) for NLM catalog citations.

Frequency of Updates

HealthSTAR unique journal citations are entered monthly into PubMed.  IGM is updated weekly with HealthSTAR unique journal citations.

Search Hint

A search strategy run in PubMed will not retrieve exactly the same number of journal citations for the health services technology, research, and administration literature as an identical search run using IGM's HealthSTAR search screen because of the difference of the update frequency.  In addition an IGM HealthSTAR search may yield additional retrieval for books and technical reports in this subject area.  If you want to include the other types of information discussed in Phase 3, you should search using IGM's HealthSTAR search screen.  You should not search both PubMed and IGM with the same search strategy because this will result in duplicate retrieval of journal citations.

--prepared by Ione Auston
National Information Center on Health Services Research
 and Health Care Technology ([log in to unmask])