File attachments State - PENDING duration

e-Referral Service (e-RS) e-Referral Service FHIR API
1

Hi all,
Just a quick question, we’re nearing completion of implementing changes to handle the full set of file availability states (PENDING, VALIDATION_FAILED, THREATS_FOUND alongside AVAILABLE) being introduced in File attachments - Release 2.

From the documentation, my understanding is that malware scanning runs asynchronously in the background after upload, with the attachment held at PENDING until processing completes — rather than being triggered on-demand at access time. Could someone confirm that’s correct?

Assuming it is, my question is about timing. The only guidance I can find is that a PENDING file should be re-checked after a minimum of 5 minutes. Is there an expected or maximum scan duration, or an SLA we can rely on?

The reason I ask is the impact on clinical workflows: there’s a realistic scenario where a clinician needs a file very shortly after it’s uploaded and finds it still PENDING. We’d like to set the right expectations in our UI (and ideally a sensible poll/retry strategy), so any indication of typical and worst-case scan times would be really helpful.

Thanks,
Gareth

2

Good Morning. Thank you for posting your question.

Apologies for the late reply. Yes you are right, the PENDING status can be checked with a maximum time limit of 5 mins. However we have observed that the status gets changed within a min for us when we hit the endpoint again. We have observed that it changes within less than 6 secs in some cases where your file is of less MB. However the maximum time limit is 5 mins is the expectation.

I Hope this clarifies your query.