Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the potential of mobile phone technologies in the development of applications to support the self-management of individuals with diabetes or depression in India and the UK.

Paper long abstract:

The goal of the TRUMP project is to explore the potential of mobile phone technologies in the development of applications to support the self-management and monitoring of individuals with diabetes or depression in rural areas of India and the UK. This m-health project comes out of an initiative by both governments that had the purported aim of 'bridging the urban-rural divide' in technology in both counties. Critical to the goal of this project are questions of trust, at a host of levels. This presentation focuses on several of the ways in which questions of trust have arisen and been addressed in the Indian side of the project, through the early stages of work in Andhra Pradesh. As social anthropologists working alongside researchers in public health and computer science in both countries, we also consider the feasibility and dilemmas surrounding the goal of the project, and the ambiguities inherent in notions of self-management through technological aids, in the context of India's highly pluralistic and stratified healthcare.