Hero Automatic Pill Dispenser

Caution, my HERO machine sometimes dispenses two of certain meds when it should only dispense one. Hero sent me a new machine in response to my complaint. The new machine has double-dispensed 3 times in the past 2 weeks.

DON’T DO IT. The machine spits out wrong doses, especially with smaller pills (like blood pressure). Customer service is non-existent for days and they continue to charge more and more to longtime customers. There are pill dispensers for Vitamin supplements that hold large amounts of meds. They come in a circular pill dispenser.

I purchased 2 (one for am and one for pm) at the same cost as one month with the Hero. You press a bar and it’s super easy. It’s a huge pain to ship the machine back and they’ll charge you 1,500 if you don’t get it back to them. Don’t bother. They really only care about getting people signed up and on automatic payments- they care nothing about you long term.

Don’t get this. The machine I received or the app are failures! My Dad could have been killed had someone not been monitoring from the beggining. It dispensed double the blood thinners and gives too many and too little of some of the other medications.

He has impaired cognitive function which is why we need the machine and the customer service is non existent once you pay for machine/service. I have been trying to get help for days. Thank God my credit card company blocked future charges and is refunding my initial payment.

This thing has its perks, but also a lot of design flaws the company refuses to see. We called to offer our point of view, as an end-user of the product, and the customer service agent was very dismissive of our concerns and blamed it all on "People struggling with the app."

Maybe the app needs work if so many people have problems. It seems their designers didn't take their customer into mind... old people with less tech skills.

1. There needs to be a video or something to show people how this works and how the app and device work together, and maybe even a preview of what setup is like.

2. There was no real guidance or instruction manual for setup, just an app and a device, and if you don't know what order to do things in.... my parents ended up loading the whole machine and having to take everything back out.

It was really confusing for them and took me half a day to straighten back out for them. A little video walkthrough would have done them a great service.

3. If you just need to dispense one pill, like if you have pills you can take as needed outside of the schedule, you have to use your phone. How dumb. Why can't I just scroll through the device settings to get that pill? Why do I need a phone?

4. If you live someplace with power issues.... severe weather etc... no power, no pills. Now you have to get out that key and crack open the machine to a bunch of unlabeled cups of pills. Can it have a battery back-up?? Or do I need to buy an external one on my own?

5. Why don't the cups come with labels? That would make loading and issues like this a lot easier to deal with.

6. Why didn't this come pre-loaded with the drug information that will be placed in it? Why did I have to share the list of pills they take, along with dosages and times, just for this thing to show up with no programming?

It would be so cool if it came with the drugs programmed, cups labelled, and when you first turn on, the machine turned a cup to you and told you what drug to put in that cup, or the cups were labelled.

7. HUGE DESIGN FLAW: If you don't grab your pills within 30 minutes, the dosage is skipped. Oops! So now you're getting home from the store and the HERO doesn't even tell you that you need pills. Is that a HERO?

I got the device and tried it, but realized that it was too slow to actually be helpful during a morning prescription fill. I decided to stop using the device but was still charged the monthly fee.

I finally asked to stop my subscription and was told that not only do I need to pay the rest of the year subscription, I also need to pay for the device that got left at my last residence since it’s considered “lost” apparently the fee we pay initially might be just the cost of shipping and that the device is only rented to us.

The representative laughs because I missed all these important details while I did not get any resolution other than pay the last months and the lost device.

I got trapped and it’s just frustrating that despite having had a worthless device that I did not benefit from, I am now liable for hidden fees that is not mentioned with the upfront cost.

If you don’t have it among the options at check out I feel that these are all hidden cost, especially since I made this purchase through Instagram which leads quickly to checkout.

The representative was being smart with me and basically calling me stupid since I didn’t see those cost that he claims are present in their website. Be careful with hidden cost and watch out for the device since they still want it after 12 months when you decide not to continue.

High pressure sales to have Hero send me refills. After signing up for refills, I get an email stating I don't qualify for refills because their pharmacy partner is not licensed for Alaska. The sales support should have known this! Now I have to spend the next 2-3 days refilling over half my meds which I need!!

I am on my second machine. After while it stops dispensing correctly. It would dispense 2 out of my eight meds, 4 out of 8 meds. They just sent a new machine. I may send it Back and go back to the good old reliable pill box.

This device likely has many benefits for people without cognitive impairment. Unfortunately the people it is marketed to frequently have this issue. My mother in law happens to be one of those people.

We got the device because while she is med compliant she does not have a good memory for which meds to take and will get confused and will take the wrong medications at the wrong time.

We got this device for her back in May and at first we’re very optimistic that it would work well. What we quickly discovered was that the menu system is very confusing for someone that has dementia.

She would accidentally skip doses and would then have to be walked through how to dispense them. This would be fine except that the process for dispensing the missed doses is not intuitive and walking through was not a feasible thing.

Eventually we got her to the point of being able to dispense the medications most times without trouble. After a short period of peace and accurate dispensing we started encountering our next set of problems.

The device would have issues dispensing a pill and would provide a written prompt on the screen to manually dispense the pill by removing the pill container removing a pill and then properly reseating it in the device.

If she had full comprehension this would not have been an issue. But with cognitive impairment it became an issue of her not understanding the instructions and thinking that they had in fact dispensed the pill.

Further they did not notify us as the caregivers that this error had occurred. As a result we could not check with my mother in law to see whether she had taken the pill manually.

When we spoke to the support team at Hero Health they stated that there were no issues with the machine and that it is vital that she be able to skip doses.

They speak to medication adherence being important but do not promote the functionality for caregivers to actually get medication adherence.

They additionally stated that their workaround for the skipped dose problem was in a future release adding a remote dispense option. This would have been a wonderful feature to have.

But they still have not released it and as a result we are having to pay a substantial sum of money to have a person administer medications because we cannot trust the device to function properly or to promote medication adherence without constant monitoring and remote troubleshooting and coaching.

I understand that for many people who simply need a reminder to take medications this device might be a great solution.

But if you are looking at this for someone with cognitive impairment or dementia this would not be a good solution for you in my opinion. It is too complex in some aspects and not robust enough in others.

The machine costs $100 - not $1000 as other reviewers have noted. The monthly fee is for the app on your phone and you can't use the machine without it. We have had the machine about 6 months.

I set it up pretty easily, although the internet-linking and phone-app install would have been a test for my parents (they bought their first smart phone for this). The phone app is pretty user-friendly and made it simple to list the meds, dosages and schedule.

Refilling medication is easy enough once you learn the procedure and is done entirely with the menu on the machine.

Overall we are pleased; Mom knows what to take and when to take it and seems motivated by the tracking graph that shows "100% compliance" for her medication taking "skills".

At "pill time" the machine's lights start flashing and it makes noise; it is probably impossible to ignore. You then push a button on the front of the Hero and pills are dispensed one by one, while it makes machinery noises and vibrates. I can tell from downstairs that it is dispensing.

If she doesn't push the button to dispense her meds, I would get a text on the phone (or a call, if that's what you prefer) to alert me.

Improvements? I wish the 'pods' were larger to accommodate more doses. Regular-sized capsules like ** must be refilled regularly as only 45 pills of that size fit in a pod at one time.

The machine is also limited to 10 different meds. If you take more than 10 meds you would need a second machine AND a separate, $30 per month app.

I would think that one subscription to the phone app could accommodate a second machine for 1 person, maybe for a small fee, but full price is ridiculous. The One-machine-per-person rule would make some homes two-machine abodes for couples who have an extra $60 a month.

I have had an issue with the machine and called customer service twice without resolution; say I refill the machine and enter the exact number of pills into the app.

You would imagine that the pricey app would use simple math to keep track of how many pills are remaining later on, by multiplying doses by days and subtracting from the original amount. Nope.

The machine is regularly showing "running low" warning on meds when there are plenty (like, 80) left.

One of the customer service folks told me "if the pill is very small, the picker has to reach farther down in the pod to get a pill" and that the machine is fooled into reporting low quantity.

This explanation sounds silly to me; the many sizes and shapes of medications must have been a hurdle for the engineers in developing this system and equipment and I don't think it can be blamed for the trouble the app has tracking pill counts.

I must admit, however, that the meds incorrectly reported "low" tend to be the tiny ones. There is optional capability for the Hero to contact both your doctor and pharmacy to alert them when you are low to order refills, which would be GREAT... if it was accurate.

I'm glad that we didn't approve that option in the initial setup! Recently the Hero software was auto-updated and the menus have changed a bit.

I imagine that the erroneous "low quantity" issue has been addressed and I will be checking pill counts to ensure that the problem has been solved. Security-wise, if someone wants your pills, they will get them. The machine is not huge or heavy and could be carried off.

A caretaker, etc could easily remove pills from it if they have access to it. Someone else wrote in their review that a pin number must be entered for every dose but this is not the case.

I believe a pin could be set up if necessary, but I do not remember this being an option when we set ours up. All security features are set up in the phone app but I don't have any real experience with them as they are not necessary for us at this time.

I will say that every dose dispensed had been accurate and on time, which is, of course, the most important thing. A dollar a day buys a peace of mind, for us. Wrap up: I like it and await improvements.

Machine cost $1,000 and 360 a year. I would not recommend this to anyone. Hard to get customer service and support. I use pill pack and it is very easy to use and get refills. I think that the customer support is not in the USA.