Abstract: A system and methods for managing, securely storing, and exchanging patient information and medical images across a plurality of medical facilities and providers. A Universal Medical Information Archive System (“UMIAS”) allows medical providers in various physical locations to securely store and exchange patient information and medical images by providing a streamlined, unified, universal system. The UMIAS allows providers to request and view a particular patient's entire medical profile, which may include various medical images as well as myriad other items of medical information, from a centralized archive such as a cloud-based hosted archive system. Further, according to one embodiment, the UMIAS maintains a Universal Medical Patient Index, which collects and unifies local electronic patient information, and assigns each patient a particular a universal identifier, which is appended to all incoming medical images and can be used by all facilities to identify information relating to a given patient.