Born in the medical context, an interventional informatic is similar in priniciple to a pharmocological or a surgical intervention. Intervening with information is to introduce an information system (i.e., an informatic) into a human system such that the human may either enhance existing performance or perform new actions otherwise not possible because of some pathology or injury. Giving a disabled person an interface device allowing them to operate a computer is an interventional informatic. Before the intervention such a person could have no control of an external system like a computer. Informatic intervention heals a broken connection between the willful expressional capacities of a mind and a powerful tool for expression.

While in medical school, Dave Warner and partner Janice Robertson conceptualized and founded I3 based on a great deal of research Warner was doing in the areas of neuroscience and rehabilitative engineering. I3's central focus would become the developement of entirely new methods of human-computer interaction. For example, for the disabled, sensed physio-electrical output from the human body (i.e., facial muscles) served as a basis for further innovations in interface design.Quadreplegics are so enabled to participate in information culture. Once it achieved effective methods for allowing the children to interact in an information environment, I3 ventured out into more exotic realms like virtual reality.

Many and diverse were the volunteers who helped I3 do good things for the world with information technologies (e.g., Markus Schmidt, Stephan, Patrick Keller, Grant Liske, Jeff Sale to name a few). Its deeply Samaritan spirit persists and the details of this are saved for a different space. In any case, Warner left California in the Fall of 1995 to take the good news of Interventional Informatics to Syracuse University where he accepted the Nason Fellowship. At the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center for high performance computing and communications he continues to develop I3's accomplishments in the areas of HCI. The last picture on this page is of Eyal Sherman a quadreplegic who joined the team to move the work up to the next level.