There are already around 9,000 health apps available to consumers in the Apple App Store and within a year there are likely to be more than 13,000.

These figures are based on an analysis of 18 months of data from Apple’s AppStore conducted by MobiHealthNews.com, a web publication  that chronicles the healthcare sector’s adoption of mobile technology. The analysis performed for a report entitled Consumer Health Apps for Apple’s iPhone leads to the conclusion:

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.

It also shows a clear upward trend in the average price of a paid-for health app; in July 2011 the average cost of a paid consumer health app was $3.21 compared to  $2.77 in February 2010.

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, diet, stress and relaxation  women's health and strenth training are also well represented:

(click in graph to expand)

If you think that 9,000 health apps sounds like an underestimate this is because Apple’s Health & Fitness and Medical categories claim to offer thousands more, many of which are actually not health, medical, or fitness-related or are aimed at health professionals, which will be the topic of a future report from MobiHealthNews.

Clearly while there are going to be some regulartory risks in the future health apps are a good bet if you want to implement a profit maker.

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