Toronto-based Practice Better, which makes client management software for health and wellness professionals, raised $27M led by Five Elms Capital
Context & Ripple Effects
Practice Better's $27M round lands in a Toronto health-adjacent software cluster that keeps drawing institutional capital: League raised a $47.1M Series B for its digital benefits platform, AlayaCare raised a CAD$225M Series D for home-care clinical software, and earlier this year Smile CDR pulled in a ~$30M Series B for clinical data interoperability. Practice Better sits on the wellness side of that line — client management for health and wellness professionals rather than clinical systems.
The round also feeds a city-level story: CBRE ranks Toronto the third-largest North American tech hub, with research finding it posted the largest tech-job growth of any North American city over five years, and the city marketing itself as a gentler alternative to Silicon Valley.
First-order effects
- Practice Better gets growth capital from Five Elms Capital to scale its client management software for health and wellness professionals, entering a Toronto funding cohort that includes League, Smile CDR, and AlayaCare.
Second-order effects
- Competing client-management tools for wellness practitioners now face a funded rival with US institutional backing, while adjacent players like Smile CDR and AlayaCare mark where the wellness-to-clinical boundary could blur if Practice Better moves upmarket.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Toronto's rise as the third-largest North American tech hub rests partly on a health-and-wellness software cluster spanning benefits, clinical data, home care, and practitioner tools — a vertical specialization that differentiates it from Silicon Valley rather than replicating it.
The trend: Toronto's health-adjacent software cluster — benefits, clinical data, home care, and now practitioner client management — is compounding into the backbone of North America's fastest-growing tech hub.