[pnw_hazor]

US negligence law encourages physicians to follow "the medical standard of care." This means doing what they are taught in medical school shields MDs from liability until the standard of care changes. The law discourages MDs from deviating from "standard" practice because doing so removes the "standard of care" liability shield.

The software developers are not protected by the "standard of care" shield. The software developers, like just about every other profession are held to a higher standard than MDs, namely "ordinary care" or "reasonable care".

Is a software company taking reasonable care to avoid harm when it builds a software feature that secretly encourages doctors to issue dangerous prescriptions? I don't know -- doesn't sound like it to me. Though there are probably a few plaintiff's attorneys willing to find out how a jury thinks about it.

[jessaustin]

Going through medical school and years of post-doc training makes physicians less responsible than people with no medical knowledge whatsoever? Yikes! If this is true, I hope the AMA lobbyists who bribed that turd onto the books were paid well for their evil deeds...

It's probably also not great for patients with rare diseases, that physicians are penalized for trying to solve problems no physician has solved before.

[pnw_hazor]

Yep, if safer or more effective innovative techniques become known, US MDs are not expected to practice them until those innovations become accepted as the standard of care. Other industries/professions don't get that break.