Translational research focuses on applying knowledge and discoveries derived from basic biomedical research to improving the overall health of the community through better preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. While large amounts of public and private funding support basic biomedical research, there is an increasing concern, both within and outside of the biomedical community, that scientific discoveries are not being translated efficiently into tangible human benefit. A recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on this issue identified lack of an appropriate Informatics infrastructure as one of four important roadblocks to effective translational research. As part of the School of Medicine's stated goal of becoming a leader in Translational Research, the Office of Information Resources and Technology (IRT), in partnership with Lucille Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH) and Stanford Hospital and Clinics (SHC) is developing a large scale database system, called the Translational Research Data Repository (TRDR). This database architecture, based on the HL7 Reference Information Model (RIM), will integrate a wide variety of information from clinical and research systems into a common, standards-based, data model and provide SUMC researchers with a secure, HIPAA-compliant data management and analysis environment. This seminar will discuss the TRDR project and describe the design elements and architecture of the system.