Hi Daniel,

As you've seen, both lists and datasets are administrator-configured data types.

Datasets are always associated with a study (like the EHR). Every row in a dataset must be associated with an animal/participant/subject. Depending on the type of dataset, rows may also be associated with timepoints. The server automatically understands relationships between datasets, which means that you can use Customize View or other features to join together different datasets to show information for the same animal/participant/subject and timepoint without needing to do any additional configuration or coding.

Lists are a more generic data type. They can exist independent of a study, and even if they contain a field that happens to be an animal/participant/subject identifier, the system doesn't automatically associate it with other data. Lists can still link to each other or other data types via lookups, but these need to be configured on a field-by-field basis. They're typically used to populate value lists that are the targets of lookups from other data types, or to generally store data that's not directly associated with an individual animal/participant/subjects.

I suspect that lists are probably a more appropriate data type for at least some of this data. I hope this helps. Let me know if you have more questions.

Thanks,
Josh