April Coombe qualified with a BSc Econ(Hons) in Philosophy from the University of Wales, Swansea in 1994 and an MSc in Information and Library Studies from Birmingham City University in 1998.
Her first professional post was as a Research Associate at the Centre for Information Research, Birmingham City University working on a British Library funded project .(1999-2000).
She then moved to the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority taking up the role of e-librarian within their Library Services Development team. In this role she supported the NHS library services with regional and national e-library projects. These included an NIHR funded knowledge mobilisation project and a NICE funded pilot project for what was to become the NHS Evidence service (2004-2009).
Roles at the University of Surrey as a Project Manager for the NHS Evidence service (2009-2011) and at the James Lind Alliance as an Information Specialist followed. (2011-2013).
In 2014 April began working for the Institute of Applied Health Research (now the Department of Applied Health Sciences) at the University of Birmingham. In the first instance with the Horizon Scanning Research and Intelligence Centre identifying new and emerging healthcare interventions including a substantial project on use of mHealth technologies for Public Health England (Jan 2014 – 2017).
She has been in her current role of Information Specialist in the Biostatistics, Evidence Synthesis, Test Evaluation and Modelling (BESTEAM) research group since 2017.