Is it possible to locate places of a specific type (ie. hospitals) and provide driving directions to them from my Android application?

I would like to determine which of a specific type of location (ie. which hospital) is closest to the device's current location and then provide the user with driving directions to that location (ie. the closest hospital). I have heard about a Google Maps API that I believe will help me with this task. (I have already obtained the user's location by using the device's GPS.)

From reading a little about the Google Maps API, I've learned that it provides UI elements used to control maps. I'm wondering if I can use it to search for specific locations (such as hospitals) and if I can receive turn-by-turn directions from it (as coming up with the directions myself would be a headac开发者_运维知识库he).

Does anyone know what functionality the Google Maps API provides?

This sounds like something you'd want to perhaps use the Google Places API for:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/places/

However, note that there are many locations for which the Places API does not currently return a whole lot of results. See, for example, Google Map V3.0 Places Api.