Heh heh heh. DONOR, a made-for-tv movie with Melissa Gilbert, is such a rip-off it's embarrassing.

Patrick (1978) A comatose hospital patient harasses and kills through his powers of telekinesis to claim his private nurse as his own
Patrick Still Lives (1980)Italian unofficial sequel
Patrick (2013) Remake with Charles Dance

Yeah, COMA may've been the first of the "medical thrillers"' and is still, in my opinion, far and away the best.
FLATLINERS was much more in the Sci Fi genre and as far as I'm concerned was rubbish.

Believe it or not I would qualify the great 1990 movie FLATLINERS in that it combines different genres. The best movies are combinations of genres, if its JUST a murder mystery or JUST a love story it will usually be dull.
Anyway, Coma is possibly the first and arguably the most famous movie of the "medical thriller" genre, and by "medical thriller" I do NOT mean some movie about a bunch of doctors trying to prevent the spread of some deadly virus though that might qualify as medical thriller too, I specifically mean one involving corrupt or disturbed doctors or nurses or other medical professionals doing stuff that is dangerous or reckless, illegal,unethical or destructive. The doctors in Coma sure as hell were breaking some major laws and would likely have gotten life prison sentences or the death penalty had the story continued.
In Flatliners the characters though morally flawed people and disturbed were NOT downright evil and they all consented to do the "experiment" unlike the victims in Coma BUT what they were doing was still very dangerous, still illegal, and questionable ethically, so it in my opinion qualifies as medical thriller.
Earlier in the first paragraph I mentioned the importance of combining genres. Flatliners was kind of just a thriller but it was three different kinds of thrillers combined. It was also a psychological thriller, not in the sense of a villain manipulating someone but in the sense that the characters all had to deal with their problems, and thirdly it was a SUPERNATURAL thriller, not horror mind you but there was an element of the supernatural in it.
Coma was JUST a medical thriller, I much more enjoy flatliners. I have very little desire to see a remake of Coma but I would love one of flatliners.

"Contagion" is scary, because it's so realistic.

looker from the 80s

If you check COMA author Robin Cook out here on IMDB, you'll find that he wrote quite a few medical thrillers that have been adapted to screen.
Most of them are made for TV however.
And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

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