Book excerpt: This book introduces readers to essential methods and applications in translational biomedical informatics, which include biomedical big data, cloud computing and algorithms for understanding omics data, imaging data, electronic health records and public health data. The storage, retrieval, mining and knowledge discovery of biomedical big data will be among the key challenges for future translational research. The paradigm for precision medicine and healthcare needs to integratively analyze not only the data at the same level – e.g. different omics data at the molecular level – but also data from different levels – the molecular, cellular, tissue, clinical and public health level. This book discusses the following major aspects: the structure of cross-level data; clinical patient information and its shareability; and standardization and privacy. It offers a valuable guide for all biologists, biomedical informaticians and clinicians with an interest in Precision Medicine Informatics.