‘Better Life’ aims to provide affordable last-mile healthcare in remote areas of Assam

Guwahati: A doctor, working with some of the top medical institutes in East and Northeast India, left her job and became an entrepreneur to start a medical facility at a remote location in the Udalguri district of Assam.

Gynaecologist Dr Sayantani Bhattacharjee has set up ‘Better Life Medical Centre’ at Paneri in Udalguri district of Assam, intending to provide last-mile healthcare facilities to the underprivileged sections of the society. Addressing media persons at the Gauhati Press Club in Guwahati on Tuesday, Dr Bhattacharjee informed that the centre at Paneri is the flagship unit of her startup ‘Better Life – Healthcare at the Last Mile.’

“We inaugurated ‘Better Life Medical Centre’ on February 14 this year at Paneri, which is one of the biggest tea garden corridors in lower Assam and is inhabited by a large population of tea tribes and other communities. Better Life Medical Centre comprises of a multi-speciality family clinic, diagnostic centre and a pharmacy,” said Dr Sayantani Bhattacharjee, Founder & CEO at Better Life – Healthcare at the Last Mile.

The centre provides various services including doctor consultation, pathology, ultrasound, ECG, health checks, pharmacy, nebulization, injection services, oxygen, treatment room, vaccination, dietitian, physiotherapy, IUD insertion, family planning & contraception services, diabetes & hypertension management, antenatal check-up among other services at cheap affordable rates.

It also provides weekly eye OPD along with the provision of spectacles. The centre facilitates the home collection of blood samples to ease logistics issues for patients. Recently it introduced Udalguri’s first-ever Well Woman Health Check-up package, Well Man Health Check-up package and Complete Diabetic Healthcare Package. It introduced a Special Fetal Anomaly scan for pregnant women which is also the first-ever such initiative in Udalguri.

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The medical centre has services of a radiologist, eye specialist, physiotherapist, dietitian, child specialist, besides a general physician.

In near future, the healthcare centre aims to provide kids health check package, launch Better Life Foods which aims to provide nutritional supplements to cater to nutritional disorders among people of all ages. Also, it will offer counselling services for senior citizens and a Medishop which will be a bigger and better version of the existing pharmacy.

Dr Bhattacharjee is a gynaecologist and holds an MBA degree in healthcare management. She has a rich cross-functional experience of 17 years of working with various kinds of healthcare organizations, both at the grassroots and corporate levels. She has been in top leadership positions in various corporate hospitals in West Bengal and Assam.

Funded partly by bootstrap funds and a bank loan, Dr Sayantani Bhattacharjee aims to extend the services at the centre besides opening up other centres in the Northeast region. She is extremely passionate about last-mile healthcare and truly believes that small, innovative efforts can create a phenomenal impact in this sector.

“Being in this field for so long, I realized that the people living in the rural areas still do not have quality healthcare facilities. Through ‘Better Life – Healthcare at the Last Mile’, I want to serve the underprivileged rural population, especially in the current times when healthcare is overwhelmed. We should understand that small effort can lead to big impacts,” she said.

“Better Life envisions to provide affordable, accessible, convenient, sustainable and quality-driven primary healthcare services to all, at the last mile. In this endeavour, we are working to establish a chain of multi-facility, primary health care clinics, that are committed to delivering affordable preventive and curative services to all, in last-mile areas across the Northeast,” she added.