Drug and medical device manufacturers last year spent $6.49 billion on payments to physicians and teaching hospitals for research and marketing purposes.

It’s the first time the federal government has collected and published information about financial transactions between healthcare providers and manufacturers over the course of one year.

A provision in the Affordable Care Act requires the collection of Open Payments data, which was released Tuesday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in order to boost transparency about financial ties between doctors and drug companies. The first round of partial data was released in September, highlighting financial transactions made during the last five months of 2014.

“This is part of our larger effort to open up the healthcare system to consumers by providing more information to help in their decision-making,” acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt said in a news release.

About 1,400 companies that make drugs and devices made 11.4 million transfers of value to 607,000 physicians and 1,121 teaching hospitals in 2014, the CMS said.

The CMS has separated the payments into three categories: research payments ($3.23 billion); general payments, which include paying doctors for travel or speaking engagements ($2.56 billion); and physician ownership or investment in manufacturers of medical products ($703 million).