Guardian 24/7

Dr. Sean O’Mara

Dr. Sean O’Mara is the founder and president of Guardian 24/7 and inventor of several innovative medical devices.

He formerly served in the U.S. Army and provided medical support to the President of the United States, other senior government officials and high-level foreign dignitaries. Among his military assignments, Dr. O’Mara was chief of the department of emergency medicine at the largest U.S. military-run hospital in South Korea. He was responsible for emergency medical care for American service members throughout South Korea, as well as for medical responses to potential incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear explosives.

In 2004, Dr. O’Mara was recognized as the outstanding physician of the year for his rank throughout the entire U.S. Army Medical Corps — the first emergency medicine physician to have ever received this honor. In addition to holding a Doctor of Medicine degree from Temple University in Philadelphia, Dr. O’Mara holds a law degree from Villanova University and practiced for several years in a district attorney’s office.

Dr. Robert Darling

A founding principal and chief medical officer of Guardian 24/7, Dr. Robert Darling has provided health care to people at the highest levels of the U.S. military and government, and specialized in preparing for and responding to emergencies, disasters and other challenging conditions around the world. In 1996, Dr. Darling became the first board-certified emergency medicine physician to serve as White House physician. In addition to caring for the president, vice president, their families and other senior U.S. government officials, Dr. Darling traveled to more than 40 countries planning medical contingency operations for presidential visits.

Dr. Darling has served as director of the Navy Medicine Office of Homeland Security; director of the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine (CDHAM) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland; and as a flight surgeon aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) and at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He also has served as flight surgeon and director of the Aeromedical Isolation Team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

After graduating from Adelphi University in 1981, Dr. Darling was commissioned in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. He received his Doctor of Medicine in 1985 from USUHS and completed his medical internship at Bethesda Naval Medical Center and basic flight training at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute in Pensacola, Florida.

Dr. Darling is an assistant professor of Military and Emergency Medicine at the USUHS, where he serves on the medical school admissions committee, and continues as medical consultant to the CDHAM. He has authored numerous publications and has lectured both nationally and internationally. A member of the Adelphi University Board of Trustees, Dr. Darling lives in Germantown, Maryland, with his wife and three daughters.

Brian O’Mara

Brian J. O’Mara serves as Guardian 24/7’s vice president of business development. He works with prospective clients to educate them about the firm’s services and develop treatment and advisory plans that meet their unique medical and personal needs.

Throughout his career in sales and marketing, O’Mara has developed a strong rapport with customers from diverse backgrounds in varied industries. O’Mara has led sales initiatives for several top technology firms, including Lexmark International, Kyocera Electronics and MicroStrategy. In 2004, he established a consulting firm for clients focused on penetrating the Washington marketplace.

O’Mara holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Dr. Greg Ciottone

Dr. Greg Ciottone is a U.S. board-certified emergency physician, bringing more than 20 years of experience in clinical, academic and international medicine to the Guardian 24/7 team. An internationally recognized expert in Emergency Medicine, Disaster Medicine and Healthcare Quality, he serves as an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and as visiting professor at both Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and the Universita del Piemonte Orientale in Italy.

Dr. Ciottone is the current chairman of the Disaster Medicine Section and immediate-past chairman of the International Emergency Medicine Section at Harvard Medical School. He is also the founder and director of the first-ever Disaster Medicine Fellowship Program at Harvard.

Dr. Ciottone has held a number of honored positions throughout his career, including as an implementing partner of the United Nations Development Program and as editor-in-chief of the textbook Disaster Medicine. He has served as a Disaster Management Fellowship director for the International Atomic Energy Agency and as the medical director for a Tactical EMS Training Program for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA Academy).

Dr. Ciottone has extensive field experience, including as a flight physician for a LifeFlight rescue helicopter system and as commander of the federal Disaster Team, DMAT Massachusetts-2—one of the first teams into Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. He won an Official Citation from the Massachusetts Senate for his work at Ground Zero, and in 2008 threw the Ceremonial First Pitch as part of the 9/11 remembrance ceremonies at Fenway Park. He was also named “EMS Physician of the Year” by Central Massachusetts Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in 2007.

More recently, Dr. Ciottone has worked extensively on international healthcare infrastructure development, collaborating in Russia personally with Mikhail Gorbachev in that capacity. In 2010, he was named by the Russian Federation Ministries of Education and Science as an approved evaluation expert for the New Eurasia Foundation, and in 2011 was selected by USAID as one of two US experts for consultation in Tajikistan on the epidemic of polio in the Central Asian Region.

Dr. William Lang

Dr. William (Bill) Lang joined Guardian 24/7 after a distinguished medical career in the U.S. Army, highlighted by his appointment as White House physician. He served President Clinton from 1996 to 1999.

In late 2000, Dr. Lang returned to the White House Medical Unit as deputy director, with primary responsibility for coordinating medical preparations for White House travel around the world. He was named director of the White House Medical Unit in 2006.

Dr. Lang’s career also includes service as an associate chief medical officer in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a faculty member at the military’s largest family practice training program at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and a member of “Task Force Mercury,” chartered by the Surgeon General to develop the Army’s approach to managing medical information in the twenty-first century.

Dr. Lang graduated with distinction from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1983. He completed his Doctor of Medicine degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 1987 and was a resident in Family Practice at Madigan Army Medical Center, Fort Lewis, Washington. He later earned his Master of Healthcare Administration degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

David Balch

Guardian 24/7 relies on David Balch to establish reliable global communications networks connecting our physicians and clients.

Balch is one of America’s foremost experts on telemedicine, helping to pioneer technology that allows collaboration, diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions from remote locations around the world. In 1989, Balch started the Telemedicine Center at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine. The program was an early innovator in technology development, user interface, interoperability and disaster response. As part of his responsibilities, Balch led the development and deployment of a wide area broadband network providing video, voice and data between a major regional medical center and 19 rural hospitals, clinics and prisons. Balch’s career at East Carolina University also included appointments as assistant director and then director of the Center for Health Sciences Communication at the Brody School of Medicine.

Most recently, Balch has served as CEO of DCB Consulting, a professional consulting firm specializing in digital media technologies, telemedicine and homeland defense. He has been involved in numerous global telehealth projects in the U.S., India, China and several countries in Africa over the past 25 years.

Balch, who received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Kentucky in 1974 and his Master of Arts in Speech/Communications from Murray State University, is a frequent lecturer on the practice of telemedicine and continues to be at the cutting edge of healthcare technology.