To create interactive Blender models, do I need to use Blender 2.79

If I want to create interactive Blender models, do I need to use Blender 2.79, or is there some way to produce interactive models with newer versions of Blender?

I am interested in using python-controlled Blender animations to explore and explain, in part, how the human brain works.  Initially I want to animate 1015 node connectomes from the Human Connectome Project.  These connectomes describe the medium to long range neural cabling between 1007 regions of the cortex  and 8 sub-cortical areas of the brain. 

I want to make my Blender model interactively manipulable, so I, and perhaps others, can best explore this connectome data to understand what type of information each of its 1015 brain areas can receive and, thus, represent.  I want to be able to interactively mouse over a 2D or 3D map of the brain’s regions, and -- as I mouse over a selected one of those 1015 regions --  see the regions that input to and receive inputs from that selected region -- by coloring changes to those regions as a function of the strength of the input and output connection with the selected region.

Can such interactivity be achieved with 2.8x versions of Blender, and if so how?  Or do I need to use version 2.79 to have such interactivity?