The MedAllies Health Information Exchange platform (HIE) for the Hudson Valley provides the infrastructure for sharing clinical information among connected healthcare software systems.  In particular, it facilitates information systems at hospitals, reference laboratories, pharmacies, and other healthcare entities to communicate with the CCHIT-certified electronic health records (EHR) deployed within physician offices in a community.  This integration platform for sharing clinical data among systems has several important fringe benefits above the value of having broader and timelier access to patient information.  One is the intrinsic data “normalization” process that maps information from different sources to a common set of terms and representations.  This enables end users to have a cohesive and comprehensive view of a patient’s data independent of what organization provided the medical services.  Another benefit is the ever-expanding access to more data sources as the network grows without incurring additional costs to connect with those sources.  Every EHR-based practice may receive data from each new data contributor that joins the network.  One other notable benefit is the ability to leverage the HIE as a channel to public health organizations, to participate in pay-for-performance programs, and to take advantage of other value-added services that may be built on the network.  All in all, the MedAllies HIE completes an EHR offering by enabling the electronic record to truly replace the paper record, and then some.