The following literature review draws conceptual distinctions between various types of electronic health information exchanges (HIE), to assess the current evidence on each type of HIE, and to indicate important areas of future research. Results show that while community HIE seems to offer the most open approach to HIE allowing for high levels of connectivity, both enterprise HIE and vendor‐mediated HIE face lower barriers to formation and sustainability. Most existing evidence is focused on community HIE and points towards low overall use, challenges to usability, and ambiguous impact. In conclusion, healthcare organizations’ choice of HIE strategy influences the set of partners the organization is connected to and may influence the benefit that efforts supported by HIE can offer to patients.