BOSTON -- Walls of video screens scatter the room. Cameras are mounted at almost every station. They are state of the art tools being used at the UMass Memorial Medical Center to monitor its sickest patients.

"It really is a second set of eyes that allows us to be where we need to be when we need to be there," said Dr. Craig Lilly, the medical director for the eICU Support Center Program at Umass Memorial Medical Center.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a support team of specially trained doctors, called intensivists, along with nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, staff the eICU center, and supervise care from this one location.

"We serve currently five hospitals, and 10 intensive care units, 130 beds," Lilly said.

A computer system analyzes every patient's vital signs, blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen, to alert the team when there is a potential problem.

"It really gives an added level of monitoring for the patient," Cheryl Dunnington, the operations director for the eICU Support Center Program.

"When the vitals signs start to trend in an abnormal way, the off-site clinicians check up on them, and work with bedside nurses and doctors to get them the care they need," Lilly said.

It's the next generation in health care technology. A local hospital is plugged into a virtual program that allows doctors and nurses to monitor its sickest patients without ever going to the patient's bedside. Lilly said there is a camera in the patient's room can be turned on to check on them, so they can call hospital staff if needed.

One hundred ninety-nine times out of 200, the off-site team actually notices that something is amiss before the beside providers do," Lilly said.

In the three years since the program began, the first and only one in Massachusetts, Lilly said it has saved health care costs while allowing the hospital to practice better medicine.

"Our mortality rate is lower, and we found that the care here is much more efficient so we can save lives and actually cost less money," he said.