Product Review: Pill Suite

Disclosure: **I have been given this product as part of a product review through the Chronic Illness Bloggers network.  Although the product was a gift, all opinions in this review remain my own and I was in no way influenced by the company. *

There are all kinds of pill cases on the market, and many of us with chronic illnesses that take multiple medications struggle with how best to store them.  One alternative is the Pill Suite.  The Pill Suite allows you to individually package your medications for single, one-time use. 

Basically, the system consists of a pill case that you can divide your pills into.  You then turn the funnel so that each divided section goes into its own “suite” (bag).  Once the bag is filled with the pills, you put it under the sealer, hit the button for a few seconds, and it heat seals the bag so your pills are safe and secure.  Each “suite” is one-time use only.  Once you’ve opened it, you cannot reseal it. 

The bags aren’t the best quality, and I sometimes struggled to rip them off without ripping off the part of the bag that is needed to open the bag once it is sealed.  If you do it very carefully, you can get the bag off in one piece. 

For me, personally, I can’t see using this every day.  This system is convenient if transporting medication bottles and a weekly pill organizer isn’t practical.  I guess for some people, that’s never practical and this system is perfect for those people, who may take so many medications that they don’t fit in any standard pill case.

The other issue I had is that the button on the sealer is made of very hard plastic, and even though you have to press it for just a few seconds, it’s not totally arthritis friendly.  So this is another reason why I can’t see using this all time.  But if your fingers/hands don’t give you trouble, then this really isn’t a consideration for you.        

In order to give the product a fair try, as an experiment, I doled out my pills for an entire week.  It took me probably at least three times the amount of time it would take me to dole out my pills for the week into a standard pill container.  I actually have a weekly pill organizer that I really like, but I know that there are people chronically searching for a weekly pill organizer and they never find one that they like.  So maybe a system like this is perfect for someone like that. 

I will say, it was kind of nice that all of my pills fit into a sandwich-size Ziploc bag.  It was much flatter than a normal pill case.  However, it took a bit of searching to make sure that I was picking the correctly labeled suite.  And if I would have happened to forget to take a dose, I might not have noticed as easily as when my pills are organized in a pill case. 

When traveling, I often struggle with how best to transport my meds, and this system would definitely be ideal for trips.  This system is also useful if you want to carry a “spare” set of pills with you at all times, and you want a very compact way to do that.  I can definitely see using this for travel.

You can write on the bags – best to do that when they are empty – and this allows you to customize them however you want. I needed to have two bags per day, one for morning meds and one for night meds. 

Some of you may have heard of Pill Pack, which is a system that allows you to get your pills pre-packaged for you into single serve pouches, similar to the ones that come with the Pill Suite.  If you like the idea of Pill Pack, but your pills change too frequently for you to take advantage of that, the Pill Suite is great because it’s the same concept but you can do it on your own, even when your pills change.   

Again, for me I think this is a great solution for traveling with medication.  I personally wouldn’t use it every day, but the reasons that hold for me might not hold for others.  So if you’ve been looking for an alternative to the traditional, bulky, plastic pill cases, this might be the perfect system for you. 

The Pill Suite system comes with the pill case that allows you to funnel your meds into the bags, the sealer, 400 “suites” (bags), and four AA batteries.

For more information, visit www.pillsuite.com,