As it does every year, analyst firm Gartner updated its famous Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies this summer and, according to the firm, "mobile health monitoring" is approaching the bottom of the so-called "trough of disillusionment". Mobile health monitoring will need another five to 10 years before reaching its "plateau of productivity" and steady market adoption.

Back in 2009 Gartner placed "home health monitoring" in almost the exact same place on its visualization with a similar time frame required for maturity.

While its for Gartner clients only, this summer the firm also created a more specific analysis of the technologies and trends in the patient-facing digital health market by placing them on various points of its Hype Cycle chart. Some of the newer trends that are on the rise and moving toward inflated expectations include bring your own wellness, patient decision aids, quantified self, and Blue Button+. Among those that the research firm believes to be already at the peak of hype: OpenNotes, mobile sports and fitness, medication compliance management, and medical shopping transparency tools. Those sliding into the trough along with mobile health monitoring include PHRs, care coordination apps, health insurance marketplaces, and -- still there five years later -- home health monitoring.

Patient self-service kiosks, online consumer health education and advice, and patient portals are among the few technologies climbing out of the trough of disillusionment and medical device connectivity was the only mentioned as having already moved into the entering the plateau phase.

Gartner's analysis is good fodder and one of the few analyses that organizes so many of digital health's subcategories on a spectrum of maturity and market-readiness.

Check out this year's macro emerging technologies Hype Cycle from Gartner below: