Welcome to Lothian Health Services Archive

Lothian Health Services Archive holds the historically important local records of NHS hospitals and other health-related material.

We collect, preserve and catalogue these records and promote them to increase understanding of the history of health and for the benefit of all.

Please use this website as a gateway to our collections, the services we provide and the projects we undertake.

For information on how we use personal data which you may supply to us, click here.

LHSA's Edinburgh and Lothian HIV/AIDS Collections have been used to create resources for teachers in secondary schools and youth groups. The resources focus on the Curriculum for Excellence structure. Each highlights specific items in the HIV/ AIDS collection in the LHSA. Visit it at www.hiv-aids-resources.is.ed.ac.uk.

Pictured are Deacon Blue, who are featured in the resource ‘The Impact of Marketing’.

In two projects funded by the Wellcome Trust, LHSA has developed an online catalogue to two collections of modern archival case notes, covering neurosurgery and respiratory disease. The catalogue allows users to search over 55,000 records, whilst maintaining the privacy of individual patients in accordance with relevant legislation and guidance. For more information click here.

Although the majority of personal military medical records were kept by the War Office, LHSA holds rich resources relating to hospital life in the First World War. Along with an almost complete collection of the Craigleith Chronicle, a magazine produced by staff and patients at the Second Scottish General Hospital, Craigleith, images, scrapbooks and personal papers reflect Lothian’s medical home front.

Learn all about how Edinburgh's bio-engineers transformed the lives of thousands of people with disabilities in our new, interactive resource on the history of the development of prosthetic limbs here.