Next summer there will likely be slightly more than 13,000 health apps intended for use by consumers available for download in Apple's AppStore, according to MobiHealthNews' latest report: Consumer Health Apps for Apple's iPhone. Based on an analysis of 18 months of data from Apple's AppStore, it's also clear the the average price of a paid health app is trending upward. Last February the average paid health app cost $2.77. As of July 2011 the average cost of a paid consumer health app was $3.21.

While MobiHealthNews predicts that there will be 13,000 consumer health apps available in the AppStore by next summer, today there are about 9,000 health apps available to consumers. While Apple's Health & Fitness and Medical categories claim to offer thousands more apps, many of these are actually not health, medical, or fitness-related.

Given the title you've probably guessed that our new report, Consumer Health Apps for Apple's iPhone, does not include a discussion or analysis of healthcare professional apps for the device platform. We are currently working on our healthcare professional apps report, which we plan to publish soon.

The number of health apps for consumers has grown at a steady, linear rate over the past 18 months. We expect it to continue on this track unless the regulatory environment changes drastically and scares off would-be developers from creating useful health apps for consumers:

No surprise here: The largest group of consumer health apps in the AppStore are cardio fitness apps, particularly running apps, a number of which have claimed many millions of users during the past year.

For more up-to-date stats on today's consumer health apps market, be sure to get your copy of Consumer Health Apps for Apple's iPhone today.

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