Shannon received his bachelor's degree from Creighton University, obtained his medical training at the University of Nebraska, and did his residency in radiology at Indiana University Hospitals. Subsequently, he completed a fellowship in musculoskeletal imaging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Swan accepted a staff position at the University of Wisconsin after his clinical fellowship. During his early career, he performed many investigations related to magnetic resonance angiography development, and eventually became interested in health services research due to the health policy implications of less invasive technologies. Dr. Swan is a past winner of the General Electric-Association of University Radiologists Research Academic Fellowship (GERRAF) in technology assessment and outcomes research. He received his research fellowship training under Dennis Fryback while at Wisconsin, with an emphasis on modeling preference-based quality of life.

Dr. Swan accepted a position at Indiana University in 1999 to begin a health services research effort in the Department of Radiology. During that appointment he laid the methodologic foundations for most of his current work.

He joined the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment in the fall of 2003. His major current interest is in the methodology of health state preference construction, both in holistic and multiattribute utility (MAU) applications, applicable to cost-effectiveness analysis.