The working groups review and discuss many measures pertinent to their respective domains and select preliminary measures (up to 25) for outreach to the broader scientific community (Figure 1). This outreach effort seeks to engage additional experts from the scientific community to review and comment on these preliminary measures. The working groups then consider this input in their final deliberations. Deciding on the measures to be included in the PhenX Toolkit is a difficult task, and each working group has to balance the criteria for selection put forth by the Steering Committee. If a measure is highly burdensome or is too cutting-edge to be suitable for the Toolkit but the working group thinks it is highly relevant to the research domain, then the working group may decide to include it in the Supplemental Information section of the Toolkit. The supplemental information may include gold-standard, high-burden measures and/or preliminary measures that were ultimately not selected for inclusion in the Toolkit. Other information that the working group agrees may be of value to the user may also be included. Thus, the supplemental information gives the PhenX Toolkit user additional access to the expertise and guidance of the working groups.
