Is the Location of Public Health Units in Curitiba Meeting the Citizen's Needs?

Guaranteeing adequate health services to the population is a challenge, especially in developing countries where limited resources must be optimized in order to reach a larger portion of the population. To properly assess the adequacy of health services and prioritize new investments, it is important to gather a large amount of relevant data, integrated from various sources. This paper presents an ongoing research focusing on Curitiba, one of the largest cities in Brazil. We have aggregated socio-political, geographical, transportation and health data from open repositories in order to understand the dynamics of how citizens choose their health units when required, as well as verify the availability of bus stops close to these units. The paper reports findings from our exploratory analysis, highlighting the cases where the city's administration is on the right track, but also the areas which require more investment. More specifically, using GIS and Data Analysis tools we analyze the occurrence of medical appointments made outside of the citizens’ residential neighborhood and the most frequent diseases they had. We also detail which health units do not have a bus stop in a determined radius.