Pharmacode
A simple binary barcode that steers packaging machines in the drug industry — never meant for checkout scanning.
Pharmaceutical Binary Code, developed by Germany's Laetus, reads wide and narrow bars as ones and zeros. It carries only a small number but is extremely robust: it can be read in either direction, tolerates poor print quality and is often printed in a colour only the machine's sensor detects.
The point is fail-safety on the packing line — the right leaflet in the right carton — not data capacity. That is why it has no human-readable digits and never appears at a shop till, unlike EAN.