Lincoln Gombedza MSc, RNLD Lincoln Gombedza is an award-winning Registered Learning Disability Nurse, Inclusion and Belonging Lead and Nurse Citizen Developer. His work centres on Nursing Citizen Development: enabling nurses, students and educators to design, test and use safe, practical AI and digital tools in everyday care and learning.

As founder of the Nursing Citizen Development project, Lincoln champions a simple but powerful shift: nurses should not only adapt to digital transformation, they should help build it. His work supports nurse-led tools, AI assistants, learning resources and workflow innovations that respond to clinical practice, placement learning, supervision and workforce pressure.

His approach is grounded in professional nursing values, clinical safety, equity and inclusion. He is interested in how citizen development can reduce administrative burden, improve access to knowledge, support students in practice and design better services for people with learning disabilities and underserved communities.

Through Nursing Citizen Development, Lincoln is building routes for nurses to move from digital confidence to digital creation. His work combines AI literacy, human-centred design, vibe coding, low-code and no-code development, open resources and responsible innovation. He uses Hugging Face, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic to make technology understandable and governed by those closest to care.

Lincoln co-chaired the Chief Nursing Officer’s Professional Strategy Working Group on Digital and Technology, contributing to the long-term vision for nursing and midwifery in alignment with the NHS 10-Year Health Plan: Fit for the Future. He has collaborated with the Nursing Times, Nursing Now Challenge, NHS Digital Shared Decision-Making Council, NMC, Foundation of Nursing Studies, CHIME International, DAISY Foundation and WHO.

His international work includes the World Health Organization project, Nurse-Build AI Teams: Addressing Global Workforce Shortages with Citizen Developers, presented at the WHO Symposium in Copenhagen in April 2025. The project explores nurse-led AI team building and citizen development for workforce sustainability, learning and service delivery.

Lincoln has been recognised as a Rising Leader at Keele University, celebrated among the 75 Faces of Keele and featured in the Florence Nightingale Foundation’s 90th anniversary. He is also a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and He is the Europe Hub Lead for Nursing Now Challenge.

His mission is to help nursing move beyond being end users of technology and become confident designers of safe, inclusive and clinically meaningful digital solutions.