Health uses Google to facilitate access to vaccination stations in the state of Acre

The Ministry of Health and Google announced a partnership to improve access to official information about Basic Health Units (UBS) across the country, including the State of Acre. The initiative aims to facilitate the location, contact, opening hours and vaccination calendar of health units. Currently, Acre has 227 Primary Health Care establishments, including 219 UBS and health posts, in addition to three mobile river and five land units.

The work involves updating data related to more than 40,000 health centers across the country in Search and Google Maps results, based on details provided by the Ministry of Health, to offer a more efficient experience to users. In addition, a message with a direct link to the National Vaccination Calendar will now also be displayed in search results such as “health centers near me”.

In practice, when searching for vaccination stations, using, for example, “vaccination near me”, users will find updated address, telephone and business hours data and the link to the National Vaccination Calendar to track immunization dates. The first phase of the initiative was launched last year, during Google for Brazil, when the company announced that it would start showing updated information from UBS on its platforms.

The expectation is that the novelty will continue to contribute to awareness efforts for the population to adhere to vaccination campaigns, given the drop in vaccination coverage recorded in recent years.

According to Google Trends, Brazil is the third most active country in health-related searches and the seventh in interest in vaccination globally, since 2004. In the last 12 months, the country has maintained its position among the top eight in the world ranking.