How do I Choose the Best Pill Timer?

If you are on the market for a pill timer to assist you with your medication regimen, there are several styles and designs to choose from. Selecting the best choice for your needs may seem difficult, particularly given the range of products available, but it can be fairly straightforward if you know exactly what to look for. When shopping for a pill timer, the major points to factor into the buying process are what format of timer suits you best, how many pills you take at a time, how many times a day you take medications, and where you most often take the pills.

You can find pill timers that operate more like watches or pagers that simply alert you at the appropriate times a medication is due to be taken. Other designs have medication storage built in to the unit. This choice is often a matter of personal preference, though the devices with built-in storage tend to be the most common styles on the market. If you are not looking for the ability to store medication in the timer device, a standard watch alarm tends to suffice as a method of reminding you to take your medications.

If you take a single pill at a time, a pill timer with a built-in single compartment would be sufficient for your needs. These styles of containers can hold several days' or even months' worth of medication depending on the size of the container and the size of the actual medication. If you are required to take multiple medications at once or take various medications throughout the day at different times, a pill timer with individual compartments for each dosage would be a better choice. These prevent the individual doses from being mixed up and make it easier to access the correct quantities of each medication when the timer goes off.

Medications that are taken once a day typically work well in a daily compartment pill timer, often found in seven-day capacity designs. If more than one round of medications is taken each day, there are a variety of pill timers that have two or more individual compartments for each day. If you tend to experience frequent changes in medications, there are also customizable pill timers that allow you to add and remove daily dose containers as needed.

If you travel frequently or use your pill timer more at work than at home, a five- or seven-day compartment design should be the best option, as they are much more portable in nature. If you tend to keep your medications at home, monthly dispensers may make it easier to manage your medications, since they need filling less frequently. For single medications, of course, a single compartment style works for both home use and portable use.