Mark Twain was famous for saying that there are three kinds of lies: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
The adage certainly rings true in the corporate world, and even amongst tech startups. In a recent article, I wrote about how data abuse is becoming increasingly prevalent as numbers are used to give companies a public perception edge.
While data abuse may sometimes be unintentional, its impact should not be underestimated.
Consider the case of DoctorPage, a Singapore-based online doctor booking platform which announced yesterday in a press release that they have reached a milestone of 1,500 “bookable” doctors and dentists.
| DoctorPage’s response |
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Founder and CEO Max-F. Scheichenost has issued a response to this article, as follows:
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The company added that “this firmly entrenching its position as the largest and most popular healthcare community in Singapore”, and the news was subsequently covered by SGE and e27.
On first look, it is easy to take the 1,500 figure to mean that DoctorPage has that amount of doctors that are available for instant booking on its website and mobile app.
But that is not the case. In fact, my scan of the site shows that only about 62 doctors have their time slots displayed online. So why the discrepancy?
After checking with the company, it turns out that the 1,500 figure doesn’t actually refer to the number of doctors on the real-time booking platform, but rather the number of health professionals that are bookable either real-time, via a concierge service or manual phone liaising.
What this means is that for a large number of doctors, users will have to call in to the DoctorPage hotline to make an appointment, after which the company will then mark the date on the doctor’s CRM platform.
So is DoctorPage being deceptive in the press release? That depends on who you’re asking.
If we scrutinize the announcement, there’s no indication that the word ‘bookable’ is referring to doctors that are using the real-time booking system. So technically, DoctorPage is not wrong to make that claim — it didn’t even define what the word meant.
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