Research analyst firm Gartner put together a top ten list of mobile services for 2012 and mobile health monitoring services made the list at number five:

“Consumer mobile applications and services are no longer the prerogative of mobile carriers,” Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner stated in a company release. “The increasing consumer interest in smartphones, the participation of Internet players in the mobile space, and the emergence of application stores and cross-industry services are reducing the dominance of mobile carriers. Each player will influence how the application is delivered and experienced by consumers, who ultimately vote with their attention and spending power.”

“The ultimate competition between industry players is for control of the ‘ecosystem’ and user experience, and the owner of the ecosystem will benefit the most in terms of revenue and user loyalty,” Ms. Shen said. “We predict that most users will use no more than five mobile applications at a time and most future opportunities will come from niche market ‘killer applications’.”

While compiling the list, Gartner considered revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration to qualify a type of mobile service as a top ten. Here's Gartner's brief analysis of the mobile health market:

"Mobile health monitoring is the use of IT and mobile telecommunications to monitor patients remotely, and could help governments, care delivery organizations (CDOs) and healthcare payers reduce costs related to chronic diseases and improve the quality of life of their patients. In developing markets, the mobility aspect is key as mobile network coverage is superior to fixed network in the majority of developing countries. Currently, mobile health monitoring is at an early stage of market maturity and implementation, and project rollouts have so far been limited to pilot projects. In the future, the industry will be able to monetize the service by offering mobile healthcare monitoring products, services and solutions to CDOs."

For the full list of top ten mobile services in 2012, read Gartner's full release here