Yen-Fu received his first degree in pharmacy in Taiwan where he originally came from. He completed further postgraduate trainings related to pharmacy, public health and health services research in the UK and started his career at the University of Birmingham as a systematic reviewer, contributing to systematic reviews and health technology assessments (HTAs) to help inform healthcare decision making including those carried out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). He has undertaken systematic reviews and evidence synthesis on a wide range of topics including effectiveness and safety of new drugs and devices, interventional procedures, public health and health services delivery interventions, and global health.
After the work in systematic reviewing and health technology assessment as part of the West Midlands Health Technology Assessment Collaboration, he moved on to research synthesis related to health services delivery and global health (in particular, health of people living in slums in low and middle-income countries) at the University of Warwick. He subsequently joined Warwick Evidence, resuming his involvement in HTAs while broaden the application of evidence synthesis into other areas including learning disability and sustainability. He currently co-direct the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded West Midland Evidence Synthesis Group (WM-ESG) with Professor Amy Grove, which is a collaborative network between research teams with evidence synthesis expertise across Birmingham, Keele and Warwick universities in the West Midlands region.
His ongoing research interests include evidence synthesis methodology (covering publication bias, synthesis of diverse types of evidence, how to improve efficiency and reduce research waste, assessment of the quality/validity of research, synthesis and utilisation of grey and quality improvement literature, and meta-research); use of evidence synthesis to inform the design and evaluation of complex interventions and to inform decision making; and health and social care quality improvement.