In 1985, Moses Cone Hosptial's own Dr. Robert L. Phillips, MD assembled a collection of artifacts, documents, photographs, instruments, and more that related to the history of health and medicine in North Carolina, particularly in Greensboro and Guilford County.
An avid historian, Dr. Phillips further researched and published books on the history of hospitals in the area and the healthcare providers that worked in them. He also documented issues such as fluoride and tobacco as well as the desegregation of healthcare in the south. The collection, known then as the Greensboro Medical History Library (GMHL) was housed in the Medical Library at the Moses Cone Memorial Hospital.
In 2014 due to institutional changes, the GMHL was closed and the material was put into a closed-access space within the library, now being referred to as The Archives, made up of several smaller named collections. The library also began a collaboration with UNCG's Office of Digital Projects to digitize large parts of the collection and make them discoverable to others online. Since then, content has been licensed for projects and publications such as NPR's piece A Bygone Era: When Bipartisanship Led To Health Care Transformation and the film documentary Power to Heal.
By 2021, due to still further loss of space within the library, the decision was made to retain only the physical material that related to the history of either Cone Health or the Cone family, along with select items of particular significance.
In 2022, material related to the hospitals in Alamance County was added to the digitized collection.
In 2023, the library reassessed the collection and retained content that was specifically linked to or a part of the history of Cone Health. The remaining items were given to the University of North Carolina Greensboro Special Collections department for further evaluation.
