Christopher Shanahan, MD is a practicing primary care physician with board certification in both Internal and Addiction Medicine with 14+ years of experience in clinical and research Information Technology (IT). Dr. Shanahan possesses a unique blend of experience and expertise in three domains:

1. Clinical & Research Medical Informatics & Information Technology;
2. Substance Use Disorders and Chronic Pain; and
3. Community Medicine (Community-based care and collaboration with community-based organizations, clinicians, and patients).

His expertise in assessing IT requirements of research projects (IT focused or enabled) makes him a valuable and sought after collaborator who assists with project design, development, and/or technical assessment of clinical research studies planning to leverage IT resources to facilitate their projects. He draws upon a broad network of local and national colleagues to help develop feasible and implementable program and study plans.

As a multi-talented collaborator who combines informatics expertise with activities focused on substance abuse disorders, he has led or collaborated with others to design and develop substance use focused programs and research studies enhanced by the use IT.

He adds a third dimension through his focus on 13 affiliated local Community Health Centers comprising the Boston HealthNet as Director for Community Medicine Unit. He maintains active working relationships with multiple community-based organizations and has over 24 years of community-based clinical practice. Dr. Shanahan's current projects:

Transforming Opioid Prescribing in Primary Care (TOPCARE): a randomized clinical trial of enhanced care model to transform care for chronic pain patients and their opioid-based treatment. A key trial component is a secure enhanced web-based, electronic patient registry.

Targeting Effective Analgesia in Clinics for HIV (TEACH): a randomized clinical trial of the TOPCARE an HIV specialty treatment setting using an adapted version of the TOPCARE registry.

Carefusion: Optimizing Pain Control and Safety in Patients Prescribed Opioid after Day Surgery: A pilot study investigating surgeon prescribing practices & the patient medication taking behaviors for acute ambulatory post-operative pain in preparation for a larger Randomized study of a a future randomized clinical trial of enhanced care model to transform care for acute pain in ambulatory post-operative patients

Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI):
A. As Director of the Clinical Research Informatics and Technology Consultation (CRITC) Service he assists BU/BMC researchers with planning and use of IT and informatics to facilitate clinical studies.

B. As Faculty Lead of the CTSI’s Research Networking Effort he leads a Multidisciplinary team that implemented and manages BU-Profiles (a Research Networking application). As the first institutional implementation of Open Research and Collaborator ID (ORCID) Application Program Interface (API) within a Profiles Research Network Software implementation his team received national recognition.