Therapeutic Education (TE) is a powerful tool in the multidisciplinary intervention to improve lifestyle and acquire management skills for chronic diseases, including obesity, a clinical condition whose cure is highly threatened by low long-term adherence to therapeutic recommendations. The urgent need to promote persistent lifestyle change and concordance to treatment in PwO is globally recognized. TE programs offer a vast number of long-term management skills, but it yet deals with a consistent drop-out rate, and we believe that Assistive Technologies (AT) can become a powerful tool to boost independence and improve participation.

The goal of our study was to devise and validate an innovative multidisciplinary approach to obesity and binge eating disorder, based on the sinergy between the medical-psychological field and assistive techonolgy.

We developed “TERESA” (Therapeutic Educational Robot Enhancing Social interActions) (fig. 1), a social humanoid robot, and implemented it to collaborate in a TE programs in order to enhance social interactions, improve knowledge acquisition and adherence to treatment. The specific TE intervention, called Education towards Choice and Awareness, was based on 3rd generation cognitive-behavioral approaches and consisted in eight informative and experimental meetings.

Taking part in the TE-TERESA integrated protocol determined and improvement in psychopathological domains (anxiety, negative mood, quality of life) and a stronger concordance to the therapeutic protocol.

Our research paves the way for the clinical use of Assistive technology (AT), highly promoted by the WHO to help people with numerous disabling clinical conditions improve their quality of life and acquire self-management skills.

治疗教育 (TE) 是多学科干预中的强大工具，可改善生活方式并获得慢性病管理技能，包括肥胖症，这种临床病症的治愈受到长期不遵守治疗建议的高度威胁。全球公认迫切需要促进 PwO 中持续的生活方式改变和治疗的一致性。TE 计划提供大量长期管理技能，但它处理的辍学率始终如一，我们相信辅助技术 (AT) 可以成为提高独立性和提高参与度的有力工具。

我们研究的目标是基于医学心理学领域和辅助技术之间的协同作用，设计和验证一种针对肥胖症和暴食症的创新多学科方法。

我们开发了“TERESA”（增强社交互动的治疗教育机器人）（图 1），这是一种社交类人机器人，并将其用于在 TE 项目中进行协作，以增强社交互动、提高知识获取和治疗依从性。具体的 TE 干预称为“选择和意识教育”，基于第三代认知行为方法，包括八次信息性和实验性会议。

参与 TE-TERESA 综合协议确定并改善了精神病理学领域（焦虑、消极情绪、生活质量）以及与治疗协议的更强一致性。

我们的研究为辅助技术 (AT) 的临床应用铺平了道路，该技术得到了世界卫生组织的大力推动，以帮助患有多种残疾临床状况的人们提高生活质量并获得自我管理技能。