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PZN (Pharma-Zentral-Nummer) is used for the distribution and marking of health care products in Germany. Depending on the variant, the PZN symbology encodes six digits (PZN7) or seven digits (PZN8), plus a mandatory Modulo 11 check digit. This check digit is automatically calculated; any provided check digit will be validated by the application.

PZN is based on Code 39 - Regular, including the use of Code 39 start and stop characters (*). This character is used at both the beginning and the end of the barcode message to signal a barcode reader that the barcode has been scanned. The start and stop characters are not transmitted as part of the barcode, and are not included in any check digit calculations.

The human readable characters display the characters "PZN - ", which is not encoded into the barcode.