Visitors to a newly-inaugurated healthcare facility in the city were pleasantly surprised when greeted by a robot, a doctor assistant in the hospital that promises to capture a patient’s vitals through a handshake.

Sunshine Hospitals Group, a home-grown healthcare brand, opened its Gachibowli healthcare facility, adding to a growing list of hospitals catering to Hyderabad’s affluent west, which includes the IT corridor.

“The bot installed on Sunday at Sunshine is a prototype that can scan faces, do voice interactions, including responding to queries and help make payments,” said P.S.V. Kisshhan, CEO of H-Bots.

A set of cameras in the robots’ face, storage and wireless connectivity help it store 10-days worth of data and transmit the same to the hospital’s servers.

“Though the number of healthcare institutions is growing, growth in patient numbers is much bigger. Manpower in the healthcare industry is insufficient to cater to such large numbers. We hope robots will fill this gap,” he said.

A.V. Gurava Reddy, managing director of the hospitals group, reserved commenting on the robot’s functionality in a healthcare setting, since it is a prototype, but said the functioning in Sunshine’s newly-inaugurated hospital can be gauged in a week or so.

The robot-maker has tied up with the hospital group to deploy five robots. Mr. Kisshhan said clinicians have been working with his company to design and equip the machines to make them hospital-ready. “The next iteration that we plan to deploy in about a month will capture temperature, blood pressure and a few other parameters through a handshake. We are also working with doctors to see how it can be made to capture ECG,” Mr. Kisshhan said.

For lack of a name, unlike H-Bots police robot that was named Hemant Karkare, Mr. Kisshhan said the doctor’s assistant robot also doubles up as housekeeping staff with a mop at its base that will clean hospital floors as it wanders helping patients.