One of these, Queens Hospital, established in 1840 by a local surgeon William Sands Cox, was predominantly for clinical instruction for the medical students of Birmingham.

In 1884 these institutions, including Cox's medical school, united as part of the University of Birmingham, on its new campus in Edgbaston.

Around 5⁄6 of the money was to be dedicated to the hospital and 1⁄6 to the university for the construction of the Medical School, and in 1929 plans were drawn up for a 600-bed centre that would encourage clinical teaching of medicine, surgery, therapeutics, midwifery, diseases of women, ophthalmology, ENT, orthopaedics, dermatology, venereal disease and radiology.

The United Kingdom was then in a period of financial crisis and there was controversy over the expense, so in April 1930 an appeal to build the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was launched and by the following year donations exceeded £600,000 enabling construction to start in 1933.

[4] During the Second World War the occupancy of the hospital rose significantly from 3,165 to 12,136 as it treated civilian and military casualties and many local businesses and university buildings were converted into extra wards.

[5] When the war ended, patient numbers at the hospital began to decrease, with staff treating 6000 inpatients, 20,000 outpatients and another 48,000 casualties during 1945.

Later that year Julie Walters, a former nurse at the hospital before acting,[6] opened the Breast screening Unit.