In this work, we extend the idea of quantum Markov chains (Gudder in J Math Phys 49(7):072105 [3]) in order to propose quantum hidden Markov models (QHMMs). For that, we use the notions of transition operation matrices and vector states, which are an extension of classical stochastic matrices and probability distributions. Our main result is the Mealy QHMM formulation and proofs of algorithms needed for application of this model: Forward for general case and Vitterbi for a restricted class of QHMMs. We show the relations of the proposed model to other quantum HMM propositions and present an example of application.