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"David Foster, a House staff writer and medical consultant, says NBC's ER raised the bar. 'It has created an atmosphere where audiences demand a certain amount of realism from their medical shows.'
"On House, the accuracy presents a particular challenge because the show is built around a doctor who is so brilliant only the most difficult cases are sent to him. Four medical advisers are listed in the credits.
"'The cases 'are the spine of these episodes,' [David] Shore says. 'Usually we come up with the disease first and work the episode around it. We try to look for ways to hide what it is. You can have the weirdest disease in the world, but if you can stick the guy in an MRI and find the answer, you won't have an episode....'
"Harley Liker, an internist on the faculty of David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is a consultant for the show. His job is to help guide the writing staff through the medical mystery each week. He says case studies in the New England Journal of Medicine are mined for ideas. Foster says the Web and media provide cases for episodes.
"Liker works to make the scenes realistic. 'I want any doctor, even a specialist in any area ‹ to be able to watch the show and say, 'Wow, yeah, that could happen,'' he says.
"...'There's a reason we're telling the medical stories,' Shore says. 'You want that emotion. You want that interesting and touching payoff.'"
— The above is from USA Today (4/17/2005)
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