The research documentation is for the benefit of society and the investigator. It is true, when treating subjects the information is better organized than the medical record. It contains more useful data than the medical record. There are some questions that would be inappropriate. Depending on how the database is available, prospective studies would be possible.
Good output is only possible from good input.
It is very important to pre think what data will be needed and to pre design the database so that it is useful to the researchers. For pathology, we need to digitize the images. Now we must review glass slides. We frequently conduct research with Harbor UCLA, Kaiser, and the VAs. Using data with institutions having different sets of rules is complicated.